Sound options greyed out

[Ellie]

I tried to play the sims again after an about 1,5 weeks' break, and suddenly the audio options are greyed out and the game has no sound at all.

There seems to be no problem with the sound card itself or the speakers, since the sound works fine in other applications. I tried reinstalling the drivers as well.

Can anyone help?

[J. M. Pescado]

I have never encountered this error. Check that your sound card drivers and DirectSound drivers are all in place, the volume is not set to mute, and soforth.

[Jelenedra]

Occasionally my PC likes to change what port you have to plug the speakers plug into. Doesn't seem to be your problem though. Is the PC muted for EVERYTHING you do or just the Sims?

[Ellie]

It's just the Sims, everything else seems to work fine. I'm listening to music through the PC right now. Other games have sound, too.

I checked and reinstalled sound card drivers, don't know about DirectSound but will check that as well.

[wes_h]

I had that happen, only to rectify itself after a reboot.
Funny thing was, the audio worked in othe rapplications, while TS2 had no audio.
I chalked it up to one more example of why Microsoft doesn't write software to run the Space Shuttle with.

[morriganrant]

I had that happen, only to rectify itself after a reboot.
Funny thing was, the audio worked in othe rapplications, while TS2 had no audio.
I chalked it up to one more example of why Microsoft doesn't write software to run the Space Shuttle with.

I've had it happen with other things, other then the Sims2 and a reboot was needed. Where as I adore that my chinchilla is getting to like me more and wants to be around where I am, repeatedly running across my keyboard is not a good thing. She seems to have done something so that my sound is no longer controlled through the normal method of my computers drivers but instead through some kind of dvd watching program that came with the computer. Now my sound options just disappear for no reason at all.

[Ellie]

I have rebooted the PC and the game at least 5 times, but nothing changes. It's starting to annoy me. I miss my simmies

[Jelenedra]

Are you really attached to your hoods? I'd suggest a reinstall. Speaking of which, did you recently uninstall an EP or Stuff Pack? That likes to make the computer barf all over the Sims. I uninstalled OFB once and tried to run off of my NL EP, I lost a lot of options and Veronaville. =p

[Ellie]

Ok this is really weird. I uninstalled everything, reinstalled The Sims 2, checked, sound works. Then installed EPs 1-6 without checking in between. Loaded BV with the default settings and neighbourhoods. No sound.

The game worked fine 2 weeks ago, I had not made any changes in quite a while. Then I was away for a week, during which my boyfriend used the PC for surfing on the net but claims not to have changed any settings. He did however install some XP updates, but those shouldn't really break anything?

 

[bowrain]

Maybe try uninstalling the updates? Sometimes XP updates do break things. Last week I just uninstalled 2 XP security updates that was installed 01/09/08 that apparently disabled my torrent connection. I searched around and found some people had the same problem and it was confirmed that XP updates indeed messed it up. So I'd suggest fiddle around with it.

[Ellie]

Now I've narrowed down to the pets patch. The sound works up to pets, but not with the patch installed.

I don't really feel well about uninstalling xp security updates but I'll give it a try.


EDIT: I uninstalled all windows updates visible from add/remove programs, and now it works up to seasons+patch, but in BV there's still no sound. aargh.

EDIT2: I fiddled some more quite randomly and now it all works again. Phew. Stupid Microsoft, stupid EAxis.

[bowrain]

So now the sounds are working fine? Was it windows updates?

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, you know the joke: An electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a Microsoft engineer are driving down the road in a car when the car stalls and dies. The mechanical engineer states, "I think this is a mechanical problem. Perhaps I should have a look.". The electrical engineer states, "No, I believe this is an electrical problem. I should check.". The Microsoft engineer says, "Let's just close all the windows, get out of the car, and then get back into the car again.".

[Khan of Wyrms]

Well, you know the joke: An electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a Microsoft engineer are driving down the road in a car when the car stalls and dies. The mechanical engineer states, "I think this is a mechanical problem. Perhaps I should have a look.". The electrical engineer states, "No, I believe this is an electrical problem. I should check.". The Microsoft engineer says, "Let's just close all the windows, get out of the car, and then get back into the car again.".

I heard a similar joke, except the punchline went something like, "Let's just shut it down and restart it."

[rohina]

I have the same problem with BV, which I just arred. Tried 2 different versions, same problem. Sound worked fine with Seasons.

Okay, this was fixed by patching and getting a new version of the no-CD crack that was compatible with the patch. If you arred, Ellie, this might be your solution, too.

[Ellie]

Yep it was the XP updates that borked something. Thanks for the help! Only now the sound works and everything seems normal except that there's something wrong with the uni related icons, wants and fears.  They seem to be missing entirely, see picture: http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6797/borkedunimr9.jpg

Would it help to replace the uni objects.package or do I have to reinstall?

[bowrain]

I think the icons are in ui.package, not objects.package. But I'm not sure...