Mail problems...

[Amoryte]

I have a Bigfoot living on his own and he can't get his mail.  I send him to go get it, and all he does is walk up to the mailbox and then he just stands there.  I've tried exiting the lot and trying again, exiting the game and trying again, and, out of sheer desperation, turning off my computer and trying again.  The only thing that's fixed the problem so far is moving Bigfoot to a different lot, and then he can only get his mail once before the bug flares up again.  Should I download a new mailbox ad replace the mailbox on the lot?  I'm a bit of a technotard so I honestly have no idea what to do.
EDIT: I though it might be wise to mention that I don't have any hacks or custom content installed yet since I just got done re-installing the game.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I haven't actually installed my copy of BV yet, so I'm guessing here, but it occurs to me to wonder how old your Bigfoot is?  Maybe the game is seeing him as a child.

[Amoryte]

He's gotten the mail before though.  The Servo I just had Bigfoot build can't get the mail either.  This is one annoying glitch. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

You could try installing Paladin's automatic bill payer on the lot and see whether the bills get paid (you should get a pop-up message when it happens.)  Alternatively, use the lot debugger to nuke the bills.  Or use TJs Visitor Controller to ban the postie.

[BastDawn]

Try moving him to a different lot.  The one he's on may be corrupted.

[ZephyrZodiac]

She tried that, it didn't work.  It's Bigfoot and his servo that have the problem, seemingly.  Therefore, a new mailbox won't help, they'd just corrupt that too.  But the automatic bill-payer bypasses sims completely, so it might work.

[Amoryte]

I'm assuming that Bigfoot is causing the corruption and not Servo.  Do you think it might help if I got a different Bigfoot?  Fucking BV.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Depends whether Bigfoot is corrupted or just that Bigfoot, I should say.  You could try moving a sim in temporarily to see whether they can access the mail.

[Amoryte]

I would think that if a sim could get it, so could Servo.  I'm going to play a lot with just a sim or two on it and see if the problem repeats itself.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I think you do need to know whether it's a localised problem, or happening throughout your hood.  But I would still recommend you try the bill payer, it would at least tell you whether it's the mailbox that's corrupted, and if it works then you at least won't get the repoman showing up.

[Zazazu]

Well, I don't normally play my bigfoot, but I just played him through to bill time. He autonomously went for the mailbox, got out the bills, and I was able to successfully direct him to pay. He lives by himself.

[ZephyrZodiac]

The problem could easily be the servo, you could try moving him out and leaving Bigfoot on his own, and see if the problem persists.

[Amoryte]

It's even bugged with my single-sim (no pets, Servos, Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), etc.)  It's messed up in other neighborhoods as well.  I suppose a re-install would be my next step?  Then again, where do you get the automatic bill paying thing?

[ZephyrZodiac]

www.simwardrobe.com

There you go.  Click on the Sims2 button, and then the Objects section, I think it's in the section for household aids, but it might be electrical or something.  Anyway, you get a little machine that you stick on your sim's desk or an endtable, your sim tells it to start paying bills automatically (well, you click on it in play mode) and after that, if it works in spite of your mailbox problems, you should just here it ring up like a till and give you a pop-up telling you how much has been paid.

[Ness]

Before you uninstall/reinstall, have you checked that it's not an item of CC that is causing it?

Remove your downloads folder and see if the mailboxes still bugger up. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Ness, Amoryte says she hasn't any.

EDIT: I though it might be wise to mention that I don't have any hacks or custom content installed yet since I just got done re-installing the game.

What I would suggest, though, Amoryte, is that if the bill-payer can't pay the bills, then it rather looks as though your mailboxes themselves got messed up with the reinstall.  You could try deleting groups.cache (found in your Sims2 Game folder in My Docs) and if that doesn't help, search your Sims2 CDs for objects.package files (one for each EP) and start by overwriting the one in the BV folder.  Having overwritten the file, right click on it, choose properties and check the read only box to prevent that file becoming corrupted.  You may need to do this right back to the base game, I don't know for sure, as I've never encountered this particular problem with an object that's essential to the game - maybe if someone else knows, they could add a comment to that effect.

[Ness]

   That's what you get for posting before breakfast.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, we've all done it at some time or other!

[Amoryte]

I've downloaded and installed the automatic bill payer (as well as the fish and produce packing stands, my Bigfoot has a produce stand), and I'll give it a shot the next time I play.  I'm crossing my fingers because I really don't want to go dicking around with game files, I'd probably fuck something else up, LOL.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, the other way is to remove your game folders to the desktop, uninstall BV and then reinstall it.  Then simply search your HD for objects.package, and simply make all the large ones read only.  (There are some small objects.package files, which I don't think you have to make read only too, so I think you can ignore those.)

Once you've played to either Tuesday or Thursday, the billpayer should pay the bills as soon as the postie puts the mail in the box.

If you do a lot of gardening, the fertiliser spray is brilliant, no more trees in aspiration failure because a few little bugs are making their homes in their bark!  And the disinfectant spray is useful if you find you are getting a lot of sick sims, not only can you cure them, you can treat the tile they've infected if necessary.

[Amoryte]

I'll look into those.  I'm still poking around Paladins Place, I had forgotten how much I enjoy CC.  You tend to forget about it until you try and play without it. 
EDIT: Thanks for the site reference, ZephyrZodiac.  The majority of my previous CC was from MTS2, and I needed to expand my horizons a bit. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

I've been a fan of Paladin since my Sims1 downloading days.  You should definitely get the HackConflictDetectionUtility and Sims2Categorizer from the program section, I wouldn't be without either of them now.  Sims2cat is much easier to use if you want to edit an object mesh file description, price etc., than messing about in SimPe.  If you get sick of seeing an object plus all its recolours in every room in the menu, you can get rid of all unwanted rooms from the menu, so if it's an endtable that's part of a bedroom set, it only appears in bedrooms, for example.

I just wish he'd do a Sims2 version of WallCat, as the one from DJS Sims won't work for me.

[Amoryte]

The automatic bill payer works!  Yay!  I'm so happy that this thingie works that I don't even care about the real mailbox being bugged!  Thanks so much for telling me about/linking me to it!

[ZephyrZodiac]

That's wonderful!  And of course, you save all that worry about getting the bill paid - it's so easy to forget!  I'm so glad you liked Paladin's Place.  If you like his furniture, there's more and loads of recolours still over at Kiri's Simthing for Everyone - I think you'll find a link to it at Paladin's.