More Awesome Than You!

I  spent over 3 hours going through all my objects - deleting what I don't use, no longer want because it's obsolete, looks crappy in-game. etc., etc. But when I started my game back up again later on, all those objects are right back in there! What's up with that????? I'm sure that I clicked yes when it asked me was I sure I wanted to permanently delete. And yes I saved before I quit..... :o ???

Have you tried to delete also thumbnail files?
They're in Thumbnails/ folder.

I have been spending the better part of today doing exactly what the OP discribles.  I have so much CC crap it's a nightmare.  lol

So, obviously this thread has my interest.  I want stuff I delete to be good and gone!  If I were to look in this Thumbnails folder, how would I know which thumbnails were for deleted objects?

Go to the Downloads folder and ensure there are no read-only files in it. Apparently, the game catalog is unable to delete such package files.

...oddly enough

Pretty much so, since we're given the impression that an object is actually being deleted.

Fortunately, this feature has saved me from my own actions more than once. ;D

Dumb question: How do I check to see if there are read only files in the DL Folder? I use sub-foldering and I have a large amount of files. I don't want to look at the properties of each and every one.

Start / Run / cmd.exe
cd /d "C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads" (or whereever you have your saved games)
dir /ar-d /s /b

(list all files which are read-only and are not directories, traversing sub-directories, using full path names)

If there are too many for you to see, you can output the list to a text file:
dir /ar-d /s /b >ReadOnly.txt


[Update:]
Oops, I did it again.  I have a tendency to answer the question asked, rather than trying to solve the actual problem.

To change all read-only files to read-write:  Start / Run / cmd.exe / cd /d <your download directory> as above, then:
attrib -r *.package /s

(clear the read-only attribute from all package files in this directory and all subdirectories).

Yes, Marhis, I tried this also but some objects were still there..........


Ummmm.....errrr.......duh....... I didn't quite understand your method, Mootilda, but I know what you mean....
So I went to my downloads folder, right clicked, opened "properties" and unticked "read-only", then apply. It then asked me if I wanted to apply this to all sub-folders within this folder and said yes. It took about a minutes to run through.
Correct me if I just screwed my game up but now all files within the Downloads folder should be read-only, right???

My method involves using a command prompt.  You click on the Start button and select the Run... menu item.  Type cmd.exe into the typable area in the Run window.  This will bring up the command prompt (usually a window with white type on a black background).  Then, you just type in the commands as they show up in my post.

Your method should also work.  If you unticked "read-only", then all of your downloads should be read-write (ie, NOT read-only).  Try deleting a few of the downloads that weren't deleted the first time, and see whether they disappear now.

Hi Mootilda<

I tried to use your method by copy/paste of what you typed and it keeps coming up as the system cannot find the path specified. My files are located in the c drive, my documents, ea games, etc.

Is the cd/d part referring to my cdrom drive? Should there be any spaces in there?

There is a space between "cd" and "/d".  This isn't referring to your cdrom drive.  the "/d" option says: change to the specified drive; ie, if you have more than one drive, the command prompt might come up on a different drive than where you store your save games.  If you only have one drive (C:\), then you don't need the "/d" option.

Mootilda, please bear with me on this.

I only have the one drive, so when I open command prompt, and it looks like this: C:\Documents and Settings\The Sims>
I should then insert a space (or no space?), then type: cd /c "C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads" (with or without quotes? I've tried it both ways) or
should I type it without the cd /c since it's already pointing to the c drive?

You have two options:
cd /d "C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads"
cd "C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads"

If you are already on the C: drive, the two lines above are basically identical.  You need the quotes around the path, because the path has embedded spaces.

The "/d" option means "go to the drive specified in the path that follows this option".  If you don't specify "/d", then it stays on the current drive.  In your case, the current drive is the drive that you want, so you can specify the option or not, whichever you want.

I hope that this makes sense.

Mootilda,

I've tried every which way possible to get this to work... with no success, so I am just going to remove all my downloads (again) and start from scratch. Thanks for your help.