For some reason, when I try to go to community lots (with a sim, not just to edit them, I think that still works fine), it begins to load (the squares light up like usual), but then simply *doesn't* load..it sits there forever. I think the longest I waited was like 20 minutes for a lot to load before just giving up and exiting the game.

This happened to me once before, but the next time I tried, it worked just fine. This time I've been trying all day and trying different things to fix it and nothing seems to work. It happens in both college town and neighborhood lots.

Could it be because I just made a new college? Could that have slowed it down to that degree? Or could it be a mistakenly-downloaded hack? If so, how would I get rid of it?

Any suggestions would be *greatly* appreciated!

..if you have recently downloaded a lot, it may have had a hack in it. you could use the clean pack installer to sort through your downloads folder, hacks are in red. and see what you have and you can disable the hack (re writes it so game doesnt read it) or remove it. you can also use the hack scanner to scan the downloads foder, it will lsit all hacks it finds. ..if all else fails, you can remove your downloads folder and run the game and see if it is something in downloads. if it is then you need to sort through your downloads by adding a few at at time and trying your game.

Is this a maxis lot or one you built. If you build lots with a lot of custom content, they can take a very long time to load. I discovered this the hard way. Scanning folder for hacks and duplicates is a good idea.

Teresa

It happens with any community lot I try to go to, and they're all Maxis.

I tried the clean pack installer, and removed the downloads it found, then tried again and the same thing happened. I didn't think something as small as a download file could do that anyway.

I'm thinking it's because I recently built a huge university, so I want to try getting rid of the uni, but I don't want to get rid of it for good.

So my next question is - is there a file or folder of files that I could back up to preserve the university I made? Is there a way to temporarily remove it from the game to test it, and then put it back afterwards? I don't want to have to build it all again, it took me days.

I figured out by trial and error that it was my actual neighborhood file that was bad, though I still don't know what caused it. I had to package up all my families and re-install, so I had to give up all the relationships I had going, but community lots are working again at least. Couldn't think of any other way to solve it.