More Awesome Than You!

again.

The subject line says it all.  I recently had a hard drive crash.  After replacing the dead hard drive, I've done a clean install, reinstalling the EPs and SPs (I have all of them) in order, and patching the EPs and the 1 SP as I go

Running it off of Mansion and Garden Stuff, fully patched, in each of the neighborhoods, it takes like 5-6 minutes to load, and cycles each time with the Creating Pets, Creating Weather, Creating Exotic Locations, etc, as though it's the first time I've played the neighborhood.  I can't get it to stop.

Now this wouldn't be a problem in itself, but it's also got a glitch where if I move a Sim off the lot (to go downtown, community lot, whatever), when the Sim returns to the lot, the clock resets at the 8 AM Monday.  On an Apartment lot, it doesn't even recognize that my Sim has indeed actually chosen to rent one of the apartments.

I haven't reinstalled any custom content, and I'm running nothing in the way of hacks.

Has anybody else run into this?  If so, do they have a solution that goes beyond "your install is hosed"  This is the second time I've done a wipe/reinstall, and it's getting a bit tedious.

Thanks for the help.

I'm afraid your installation is borked; I can't think of any other possible explaination, sorry.

Do you have write permission to your documents folder? It sounds as though the game is not able to write/ save changes for some reason. This might happen if you do not have the correct permissions for the documents folder, or something is preventing writing- for example, a badly set firewall/ security program.

Hmm.  How'd that happen.  This would be the correct answer.  Pretty Weird.

I had Lots reload to random prior saves when i was running Spyware Doctor.  One of Spyware Doctor's features was doing it (for the life of me, i can't remember which feature, but that program was the culprit).  It was most definitely interfering with TS2 saving info, it was also borking my new Spawn babies and Spawn transitions at save.

Are you still using Spyware Doctor?  I'm using it, and your response has intrigued me.

I uninstalled it and all of those problems immediately stopped (for me).  No more borked/disappearing babies, no more borked age transitions, no more lots mysteriuously reseting to a prior save.

Could be that the program is seeing the data the game is writing as a threat, and is blocking it. Perhaps there is a way you can tell it to allow The Sims 2? GayJohnScarritt, I would be wary of using a hood that has had problems due to this- you have no way of telling whether your hood files were partially written to or not. As each game play session requires changes to multiple neighbourhood files, it is possible that some files have been changed and others blocked, therefore causing inconsistencies. It may not be apparent at first, but could cause corruption later. I would strongly recommend to scrap a hood which has had these issues- or else revert to a backup from a safe time.

FYI.  I finally fixed this.  Intelliguard on Spyware Doctor was preventing a write to the Sims 2 save files on both the neighborhood and individual lot level by the game.  I added exceptions to the Global Actions List for the following files in the Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff/TSBin folder: Sims2EP9.exe; Sims2Launcher.exe; Sims2UPD.exe; Sims2UPD16.exe; Sims2UPD0.exe

Problem is now solved.

For those using Spyware Doctor with an earlier expansion pack, you could probably do the same for the equivalent files in the TSBin folder for whatever was the latest expansion installed and have the same luck with it.

That was the add-on, i just couldn't remember the name.  I didn't know how to do the exception bit so i just scraped the program and got something else.  Thanks for the info.

As for those hoods effected, those were deleted during my last re-install to try to fix my buggy babbies/transitions.  At that point, no-one seemed to have a clue why my stuff was bugging, so in frustration i deleted all backups i had on my computer of TS2 and started off fresh.  No idea now how i stumbled on that Spyware Doctor bit, i guess in my state of absolute relief, i just mentally blocked out the pertinent information.  :)