I think I broke it. The game won't even finish loading.

[HeyYeah]

I woke up this morning, logged in on the computer that has the Sims 2 installed on it, ended superfluous background tasks, double clicked on the shortcut, and waited for the game to load. As the game was loading the lovely "Application has crashed. Application will now terminate." message popped up. I deleted the groups.cache file and tried again. Again, it crashed. I took out my downloads folder and tried yet again. It still crashed. Then I tried with my SavedSims folder taken out (I've got some crappy recolor I made when I was messing around with BodyShop the other day in there and figured it may have been borked somehow.). Still crashed. I took out the whole Sims 2 folder out to let the game regenerate it, and then it loaded. I exited, deleted the 'hoods that came with the game and put my hoods and downloads back in. Started it up, and it crashed again.

What do I do now? I am I going to end up loosing my 'hoods and having to start from scratch? Does this sound like a problem that may be due to SecureROM (I'm infested. I got it with Sims 2 Deluxe and never removed it because I didn't want to mess the registry if it wasn't causing problems.)?

[Kazzandra]

Get rid of Securom. It's just a good idea.

Did you also delete your neighbourhood manager? That would be with all of your neighbourhoods. Try letting that regenerate.

[HeyYeah]

Did you also delete your neighborhood manager? That would be with all of your neighborhoods. Try letting that regenerate.

Tried that. Didn't work. I've discovered that it's only one of the neighborhoods that's causing the crash. Unfortunately it's the one that I've played the most, but at least everything else is okay (other than my lots and houses bin, which I lost due to my own stupidity), and I can play now.

[Solowren]

Have you been screwing around in the borked neighborhood in SimPE? I went on a character-deleting spree about a year ago and lost my neighborhood because I didn't know not to delete certain files.

[HeyYeah]

Have you been screwing around in the borked neighborhood in SimPE? I went on a character-deleting spree about a year ago and lost my neighborhood because I didn't know not to delete certain files.

Nope. I haven't used SimPE in months; I'm always afraid I'll screw something up.

[cassandra]

If you have recently put new CC into your game take it out.

This is why my downloads are so organized, I have had this same thing happen almost a hundred times!  I always have the folder open that I last extracted content into, this way if it crashes the program or turns the sky orange, I know just what did it. The last time this happened to me it was from the fishing bridge from ReflexSims forum; I was so excited that sims would be able to fish from the pier, alas it borked my game hard.

I organize everything based on where it is found in the catalog -
1). Game Modifations have the first folder, then sort by who created it.
2). All Neighborhood deco, and items commonly found on Community Lots have the second folder.
3). Build Mode has the third.

So on and so forth. One more thing, many players don't know that you can dump all content for BodyShop/Create a Sim into the SavedSims folder, nothing will be worse for wear. I give defalut replacements their own folder as well, then subdivided by type.  I also rar backups of the different folders and store them on a thumb drive, it saves me hedaches.   

[HeyYeah]

CC isn't the problem, because the game works fine now with the Downloads and Saved Sims folders in and the N0001 folder out, and worked fine from the time I last put CC in until this morning. I don't know what happened, but something in the N001 folder is causing it.

[Hecubus]

Have you removed your groups.cache? It usually won't let me load the game at all, but yours may be a bit slower on the draw.

[Milhouse Trixibelle Saltfucker III]

He says he did.

I deleted the groups.cache file and tried again.

[Hecubus]

I swear I read his post three times and still I missed it. I admit that I'm at a loss. I think at that point, I'd back up my files and start again.

[spambi]

I'm having trouble loading my game also. I removed Securom and I'm using the no-CD .exe for the 3rd (or whatever the latest is) patch of Free Time.

I had a few problems before that might have been causing the game to not load. I had two stuck pregnancies because I had the wrong version of nopregannoy. I got rid of that and the game loaded. Then it went back to not loading. I found that I had some .1 character files in my main neighborhood (you might check for that.) I fixed those (delete the smaller duplicate file, rename the .1 file to the same name without the .1) and it loaded again.

Since then it has taken me many tries to load the game. I usually have to remove my downloads, main neighborhood and all those cigen/cache files and then it will load. Then I put the downloads and main neighborhood back and it may load (sometimes on the second try.)

I hadn't tried deleting the neighborhood manager. I'll try that, though I'm seriously questioning why I'm willing to spend so much time on a game that takes so much effort just to start.