SOLVED: BV New Sims Disappearing on restart, possibly due to BV patch 2

[GalenZ]

Last night, my long-running BV neighborhood started losing newly created sims.   I could create one, move it in to an existing house, play with it extensively, and save without problems.  But after I exited and re-started the game, the new sim had vanished from the household, not even an icon.   This happened several times, and even sims I left in the sim bin likewise disappeaered.   All attempts to locate the sim in the neighborhood proved useless; even SimPE could not find the sim.  Other sims still had the memories of the missing sim, but the name was corrupted to something with non-ascii characters. 

However, in the neighborhood Characters/ folder, I found oddness:  packages with names like N003_User0308.package, and a matching N003_User0308.1.package.   The '.1.package' was newer and larger; the 'original' was like 12KB, while the .1.package was >200KB.   Opening them with SimPE showed that they somehow contained my missing sims, but I couldn't fire out how to see any stats, put them in the neighborhood, etc.

I hadn't installed any new hacks recently, but I removed all my custome content anyway, and the problem still persisted.  I removed my entire EA Games directory and let the game recreate a new one; the problem still occurred.  Suspected that perhaps my recent install of the BV patch 2 might be the cause, I uninstalled BV completely, and reinstalled it without any patches at all; the problem still occurred.

Evantually, I found that I could re-create the problem by starting the game in a totally clean user directory, creating a new family using CAS, leaving it in the sim bin, then exiting and restarting.  The newly created sim(s) would be gone from the game, though their files still existed in the neighborhood's Characters/ folder.

Playing around a bit, I found that the problem did *not* occur when I uninstalled BV and created sims in Seasons, and such Seasons-created sims would survive when I re-installed BV.   But even a spanking new installed of BV and a spanking new user directory had the problem.

Finally, I decided to try renaming on of those 'User_0308.1.package' files to just 'User_0308.package', and voila!  The missing Sim reappeared in my Sims Bin!  It seems that somehow the game is creating the '.1' files as temps, and then failing to move them to the proper name on save/exit.

I've been hacking on this all night, and have not yet experimented to see if doing such things to Sims in households will restore the households.   Likewise, I have not uninstalled and reinstalled *all* my Sims games to see if it fixes the problem  (Though I did do a reinstall of both Seasons and BV, and it still happened).

I could not find any mention of this problem on various Sims 2 sites, though I did find some other cases of sims vanishing similarly, though in totally different circimstances.  My suspicion is that this problem is somehow related to BV patch 2, though I fail to understand how removing and reinstalling BV would fail to fix it, or that other patch 2 users could have failed to notice it.

So, my questions are:  has anyone else seen this problem?  Does anyone have any idea what the cause might be?  Any suggestions on how to fix it?

FYI, I'm running Windows Vista on a dual core Dell XPS 410 with a nVidia GForce 8600 card, which has proved otherwise stable.  My filesystem is far from full, has been recently defragged, and has otherwise not been giving me any problems.  I have all TS2 expansion packs, and the FFS and GLS stuff packs.  I am not running a cracked game, and have had no obvious problems with SecuRom (though as that stays on my computer even after uninstalling BV, I'm starting to suspect it).  I am posting this message on several different sites, not just this one.

I would appreciate any help that anyone can provide.  Thank you in advance.

GalenZ


SOLUTION:  Back up user files.  Uninstall BV.  KEY STEP:  Use regedit to remove any remaining entries under 'Bon Voyage': I found 2.  Reinstall BV.  Restore user files.   Testing shows no more .1.package files created, and new sims survive restarts just fine.  See later post for more info.

[GayJohnScarritt]

   They've obviously made the patch using some spectacular feature they had thought up while making Castaways PC.  CAS sims disappearing are almost a regular feature with Castaways.  I'll also be interested in seeing what fixes/work-arounds are developed.

[kuronue]

Quick question: Nothing's read-only, is it? If your hoods or whatever are read-only, it won't be able to save.

Just thought I'd check the obvious first

[GalenZ]

Regarding Read-only:  Thinking that couldn't be the problem - as *something* is getting saved for new sims, and ols sims and familes are saving just fine, I decided to check anyway.  And lo and behold, much to my surprise, the folder *was* read-only.   But then how did any new files get created in it at all, I wondered? Still, I was hopeful that this was my problem, and that it was due to some stupidity on my part, so I unset the red-only flag on the folder, and tried again.

And the sim vanished again.

Then I looked at my folder properties again, and what do you know?  It was *still* read-only!  I unset it again, and checked again.  Still R-O!  I looked elsewhere.  Seems that *every* folder on my whole system is read-only, and I can't unset that bit.  But I can still create files and folders in a RO folder, no problem.   Seems that a read-only folder in Vista doesn't work the same way it does in Unix...

So, unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the problem.  And just to head off the next obvious question, I checked file and folder ownership and permissions.  Everything is owned by me, and has full permissions for me and the system to read, write, modify, etc.  So that's not it either.

It was a good hypothesis.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the answer.

Damn.  I was so hoping it would be that simple...

GalenZ

[kuronue]

perhaps Vista read-only means "no modifications to existing files, only new file creations"?

Bah, you have Vista, that's probably the entirety of the issue right there XD sorry I can't be of more help

[Jade]

Chances are good that none of your files are read-only if you set them to be writable.  Vista will leave the little box on read-only filled with blue on folders, but that doesn't mean read-only.  They are read-only only if the box has a check mark in it.  I had the same problem recently, I didn't notice that there was even a checkmark possible, although I am sure I had seen it.

I guess that won't help with your disappearing sims, but possibly will stop you from screaming at your folders

[GalenZ]

Fix discovered!

Short version:  uninstall BV.  Use regedit to remove any remaining Bon Voyage registry entries.  Reinstall.  Seems to work, no .1.package files created for new sims, am in process of testing.

Longer version:  I tried uninstalling and reinstalling just BV; no dice.  I uninstalled BV, removed Securom, and reinstalled BV; no dice.  I dod the above then installed a cracked version of BV; no dice.  I uninstalled and re-installled *everything*; no dice.   I finally found a old post on MTS (summer 2006, Uni-only, http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=487845) describing the same problem and the same .1.packages; they said it only went away when they not only reinstalled, but also did a System Restore from before the start of the problem.

So I decided, what the hell, let's see if there are any BV-related entries in the registry after an uninstall, and sure enough, there were two.  I gleefully removed them, reinstalled BV and fired it up with a brand-new user directory, created a new sim in CAS, exited, then re-started with my fingers crosssed.  And lo and bheold, she was still there!

Then I went and reinstalled a copy of my original downloads and neighborhoods (now filled with those nasty .1.package files), and trued again.   And yes!  Another new sim survived a restart!  And she has a normal user package, with no .1.package anywhere in sight!  It seems that my problem is now fixed

I have no idea what the 2 mystical registry entries I deleted were, how they got there, ore exactly how they affected the game, but the upshot is clear:  a bad registry entry can totally mess up BV's sim creation, and who knows what else.   I still suspect BV patch 2 of being the culprit that put them there, and given the other problems people seem to be having with it, I don't plan to reinstall it.

I hope this helps other people with BV problems.

And I want to thank everyone who offered a suggestion.  This was the only board I posted this to that was any help at all...

GalenZ

[Zii]

It is something in the registry, but it most certainly isn't a bug with BV. I had this happen way back when either Uni or NL was the latest EP. It's just one of those weird rare bugs that nobody seems to have really figured out, and has existed since base game.