More Awesome Than You!

Not-so-Brief backstory:

Ordinarily, I only play with a few EPs installed (Base, Uni, NL, BV) to cut back lag. When I read plasticbox's play style/rules thread, I decided to do something similar with my game. I uninstalled Bon Voyage and loaded the OFB + Seasons discs.

Everything ran smoothly with the first two EPs, but when I tried to install Bon Voyage again, I got the updater error: "The Sims 2 is not installed or improperly installed on your machine. Please install or reinstall The Sims 2." And the installation rolled back.

So I uninstalled SSN and OFB, and reinstalled those, and reinstalled BV - this time, when I got the error message, I opened the task manager and ended the 'updater' program. Even though the installation didn't roll back, and I have all the necessary files to play my game, my computer didn't really register BV as 'installed'.

I thought, Whatever. It won't hinder me from playing my game. When I booted up Bon Voyage to play (not using the launcher), my 'Add Business District/Neighbourhood' button was grayed out. All the OFB functions were missing.

So I closed the game, opened the Bon Voyage launcher (the one that tells you which EPs you have installed) and looked for OFB. It was registered as 'installed', but the Bon Voyage icon was grayed out.

So. Um. WTF? What can I do to 'fix' this without having to reinstall everything?

Reinstall everything? You probably should've had everything installed, and simply uninstalled all that you didn't want. I can think that it would certain screw with the game doing all that. All I can say is go ahead and reinstall it.

Uninstall everything. I recommend using a registry cleaner, such as Registry Mechanic, to get rid of all the registry crap EA leaves behind. Do not keep save games. Delete all Sims 2 folders that may be hanging around. Obviously only the ones the game creates.

Start with the base game, patch.  Uni, no patch. NL, Patch. OFB, Patch. Seasons (if you are going to use it), patch.  BV (if you are going to use it), no patch (IMO), though you can if you want.

I got the same error when installing patches after my executable files were somehow erased.  Check to see that your .exe files are still intact.  If they're not, you can copy them directly off the installation discs.  This is much easier than reinstalling!

I replaced all the .exe files, but the problem persisted. :-\ Maybe I should just uninstall everything and clear out the register like Nec suggested.

Dug this up in the wiki: http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Bon_Voyage_Bugs  If you search the help area at MTS2, it's very common. Most folks just reinstall the missing ep and bypass the launcher to get results. It seems to me that this has been happening to people since Seasons. *shrug*

But and uninstall/reinstall might work also.

Yeah, that worked for me the first time I installed BV - my NL didn't show up, so I just reinstalled it and bypassed the launcher. But now I can't even install the missing ep without the error message, which rolls everything back.

...on another note, I think my base game CD's missing. Time to crack out the torrents. :P