More Awesome Than You!

Ok, I downloaded the patch this morning and just now got around to installing it. Anyway, I clicked on the thing to install it, and at first it seemed to be installing fine, but when it was done, instead of saying my game was now updated or whatever it said "Error during update installation. You may need to uninstall and reinstall The Sims 2 FreeTime. Please make sure you backup your saved games first." If I try it again, the same thing happens. WTF? It's supposed to be fixing the game and instead it tells me to reinstall the game. Are they serious?  >:( I don't want to reinstall again. Yes, I just made a new backup yesterday, but my Sims 2 folder is around 8 GB and it takes forever to copy so I usually tell it to copy before I go to bed and when I wake up, it's done. Is reinstalling really necessary, because it doesn't seem like the patch installed at all since when I try it again, it still tries to update all the same files and it doesn't say it's up to date.

Two things to check:

1) are you using a no-cd crack?  you have to put the original .exe back first, then run the patch.
2) have you made objects.package read-only?  Make it writable, and try again.

Nope. I have a legit copy of the game and I've always used the CDs to play and I haven't touched any of the files it updates. But I just checked and they're not read only, so that's not it. And I just popped into the official BBS (I try to avoid that place normally) but it seems lots of people are having either this problem or other problems after patching the game.

Does it give any indication of the file it's failing on?  Usually it'll pop up a message about not being able to update a particular file (though it may go by fast), and then you can just try replacing that file off the CD.


Umm, many if not most of us here have legit copies, and still use the no-cd crack so we don't get the SecuROM crap on our computers. Using a no-cd .exe just means you don't have to have the CD loaded to play.

No, there's no pop-up or anything else. It seems like it works normal until the last file finishes updating, then there's a pause and the error comes up.

Vista or XP?

I have XP.

Hmm, can't help ya, then -- maybe someone else has sorted this one out.

I tried redownloading it and when the error comes up, if I move the error box, it says it's applying update to TSData/Res/Catalog/Skins/Skins.package. I checked that file and it's not read only and it opens ok in SimPe. I can live without the patch if it won't work, but I don't want to have to reinstall. But I'm afraid that if the patch partially installed that it might screw up my game if I try to play it now. Can you even uninstall/reinstall just one EP without it screwing up the game? Because I thought I saw someone say it's a bad idea to do that before. And I don't want to spend hours reinstalling every single EP and SP.

I just applied the patch and I had the same failure on TS Data/ Res/ Catalog/ Skins/ Skins.package. I hadn't bothered making any of my files read only, so I extracted a clean copy of the file from the disc (compressed.zip) and found that the version on my hard drive was slightly larger. Evidently my game has been writing to the system files, naughty thing. I replaced the skins.package with the clean version and the patch ran okay.

You can usually reinstall the most recent EP without problems (backup everything first!), but if it's just that one file, try copying it from the CDs directly.  The game files are stored in a file called 'compressed.zip' on the cd.  Just open that, and follow down the tree until you come to the package you need to replace.

If I copy the file from the disc and get the patch to install, will I still need to reinstall?

EDIT: I looked in compressed.zip and I couldn't find the Skins.package file.

No, you won't need to reinstall the whole game.  And the skins.package file may be on the second CD.  The directory tree in the compressed.zip files is the same as the one that ends up in your Program Files.

In case you didn't see the other thread, EA has admitted that actually playing the game results in the patch being unable to be applied  ::) turns out, making clothes using the sewing machine changes your skins.package, causing the patch to error on it.

Haha, I bet if I'd made my skins.package read only then the custom sewn outfits would not have been saved. So by replacing the skins.package I'll guess those custom outfits are gone.

Seriously? I guess I'm not too surprised since the programmers at EAxis don't seem too bright. I have made clothes on the sewing machine after using the badge juicer to get the gold badge. So I guess that explains why some people have problems and some don't. If they haven't used the sewing machine to make clothes, then their skins.package would be the normal size. But I also saw lots of people say it errored on the objects.package, so I wonder what's going on with that?

Mine cocked up on objects.package as well.

Custom curtains?

Nothing to do with sewing in my game-none of my sims have even touched a sewing machine yet. I had to replace my objects.package. Must say though-the patch hasn't broken my game-the NPC's show up and they can be called on the phone. That is the only difference I can see so far.

Huh. I've got a sweatshop lot in Pleasantview, where Gold-Badged employees (who earned their badges on-the-job) churned out  custom clothing by the truckload. Successfully nstalled the patch two days ago. Mostly adult male clothing, but I've made at least one outfit for each age/sex group.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1917/03222008200625pw6.jpg

It looks it gets even worse what they have done now with the Patch, the Genie Outfit is broken.

Pic removed it was tight pants not the Patch.

Nah, it's just a 21st century Genie... :)

Reminds me of the genie in Discworld who acted like a agent and was always on his cell phone.

Eaxis had nothing to do with it. It was tight Pants Dizzys casual-npc2b caused the strange Genie look. What me bugs it worked pre Patch and is broken now.

DOH! That's probably why my Genie looks all high techy tech. I haven't patched Freetime yet , so I most likely have an older version. :P

A little to the side of topic, but this seemed an okay place to ask: are these installation problems I keep hearing about (the patch worked fine for me) why EAxis took down the patch? I didn't know, but i saw a comment that the FT patch was withdrawn, and sure enough, it's not on the main site. It was never on the launcher-thingy either. I'm a bit worried, as I did install the patch. Is it going to bork my game?
If there's already a thread for this, please link me. I tried a search, but my search terms turned out nothing and I couldn't think of better ones.

If when you installed it nothing bad happened and it's working okay, I don't think it will mess up. I just installed the patch two days ago, no problems.

It was discussed in the Podium (EA admits bork-up, or something like that). Basically, if you never made custom clothes with the sewing machine, the patch works fine.  If you made custom clothes, some idiot EAxis programmer wrote the routine to store the custom clothes in a game system file, and the patch barfs when it tries to update that file and finds it changed.