More Awesome Than You!

Most people wait for their neighborhoods to become a BFBVS, with me, since I started TS2, it's been the PC.

I use the kids'  Windows PC for the Sims, being a Mac person myself.  From what I understand, the specs are very good.  It's about a year and a half old, Dell XPS.

Think this is the relevant info:

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 340 ghz (hyper threaded)
speed 331 ghz
Memory RAM 2048mb
Nvida GeForce 6800 GTO


The big problem, I think, is that my 11 and 13 year old had 6 months to trash the PC  before I tuned in (when I wanted to play the Sims).  The Sims has never played the way that it should with the specs that I think I have (not being a hardware person atall)

Haven't bothered anybody here with my performance issues, because I felt the problem was really the computer, and why suck your time.   ::)  If I try to play at the default specs, the PC freezes quickly and I have to hard reboot. So, I play at the lowest specs....I battle PC issues with anti-virus software (kids picked up some nasty ones), registry mechanic, de-fragment the drive when called for, etc. etc. Still have PC freezing, but not as much when I watch out for little things like deleting the group cache, etc.

Been holding off the BFBVS as long as possible, but the time has come.  Windows won't load at all except in Safe Mode.  (Not bad for limping along for a year.)

SO, I've lined up a guy at work to borrow an external hard drive from and will back up reinstall this weekend. hold my hand, I am so not a tech person.  I've got my IT guy at work for general reinstall info, anything to think about specifically as pertains to the Sims??

Have Base + Uni + Nightlife.  Didn't really want the latest patch, but I guess if I have to re-patch, I'm stuck with it. ?

Any tech folks want to give me an opinion of what kind of performance I should expect with my specs?

Anything else?  Chocolate? 

I'd rather do laundry than learn how to reinstall a Windows PC!

TIA  Any thoughts or general chatter welcome.  I've never done this before.

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edit ps, I should add that the only thing of value on the whole dang $$$ thing really is my Sims game, that and some family digital photos.  There's nothing else that can't be replaced easily.

My neighborhood and downloads   >:(  are gold.

Yeah, and the family photos.  ;D

I assume you mean 3.4ghz rather than 340 because hehe that would be insane.  That kind of pc should run it on max detail with no slowdowns.  However you didn't list the ram of the video card if it's less than 128mb ram you might not be able to push the details to max, i'm not sure.  My video card has 256mb ram so it can handle the high details.  If you want to know I have Sims 2 + Uni + Nightlife + patches, with these system specs and it runs smooth on max detail.  The only thing i don't have maxed is the draw distance with the lots and that kinda thing.

Pentium 4 3.2 ghz
2gig ram
ATI Radeon 9600 256mb ram
Windows XP

You can easily backup your neighbourhood and downloads before you format.  Reinstalling everything is a pain in the ass but its well worth it.  I tend format my pc every 1-2 years or when it starts running so choppy it's driving me nuts.

Actually, the RAM on the graphic card is not the most important thing. The GF6800 GTO is a much more powerful card than Radeon 9600Pro, even if it has only 128 MB RAM.

But I agree, your specs sounds very good, the game should run smoothly even on high settings.
As for the reinstall, I would suggest that you run a virus check on the back-up before you put it back on your computer, it is quite possible for viruses to be transferred to the external harddrive and then back to your computer. That happened to a girl I know, only she burnt the virus to a CD with her back-ups. Her computer was to the shop to be cleaned from the same virus several times until the people at the shop started asking what she did when she got home. They found it very strange that she would get the exactly same virus over and over again despite having up-to-date virus protection...

you can pull your most loved files and drivers on to an external hard drive or a cd if you have a writer. Actually I put as many of the dirvers as you can on floppy - the little ones obviously. Then I would just format the thing and be done with it. You will need your drivers when you reinstall windows to get everything else working. It really is a simple process, its just time consuming. You might want to read up on some basic dos commands to get moving around once you reformat so you can get the cd drive recognized etc to load up windows.

Honest, its really not that hard, it just takes a lot of time. But thats my method when I get fed up, reformat, Because I have been there with teen who thinks the computer is her personal toy to destroy and that the internet is safe...good luck

I've had to reformat my ancient computers many many times *sigh*  usually it is just a matter of popping in the reinstall cd that came with your computer (since its a dell I am sure you have one, although it may be named differently - like "restore") with a couple clicks (to answer its questions of what you want it to do) it should do all the work for you.

I ended up disabling the hyperthreading because of the performance hit.  It slowed down everything so bad I could hardly use the pc at all.  After the disable, all my programs run smooth and fast like they should.  Don't know if that would help you any, but it sure did make a difference for me.  I'm sure there is something I missed in how to use hyperthreading, but it just wasn't worth my time to try to figure it out.  Just lazy, I guess...

Formatting a hard-drive every so often is a good thing!  And especially when, like you say, you have a kid or kids who tend to end up with a ton of junk from the internet, whether they meant to or not (alas, our 8-year-old has done a number on his dad's computer and it's overdue for a format).

Yes, it's time-consuming, but it's not a hard job at all.  Just make sure, in addition to backing up your files, that you have drivers for all your hardware.  I know a lot of drivers come with WinXP but I haven't ever used that so don't know if they'd be current enough to get you going or not if you don't have original driver disks.  And of course there's that whole 'restore' thing which most people know a whole lot more about than I do.

At any rate, before I make this whole long post that doesn't even make any sense, I'm just going to wish you the best with this whole project! :)

Could you not do System Restore back as far as possible first, just to see if it fixes your problem?

Also, RegCleaner has an option for searching and finding all the junk files on your pc.  There may well be hundreds if not thousands if you've got kids surfing every game site going!  (I know whenever my neigbour's kid spends an hour on the net on this PC, I have to clean up after him! so what he'd manage to acquire in 6 months would be phenomenal!)

I don't recommend system restore. It's sometimes useful over the short term, but the farther one tries to restore back the more likely one is to cause strange issues regarding what was installed then versus what is installed now. It's also a good way to reintroduce viruses and spyware, as they get backed up right along with everything else. If things aren't improved, you'd have a hell of a time knowing what is from existing issues and what is from issues you reintroduced - whereas with a reformat and reinstall you're starting with a clean slate and any issues that come up are much, much easier to trace to their real cause.

Save what's important, wipe and reinstall, and enroll the kiddos into some computer use classes if you can. Or maybe limited access accounts, depending on how much of a headache this ends up being.

Thanks for your thoughts!

3.4 ghz  ;D , that's what a tech person I am.  I'd scribbled the specs on scrap paper, must have missed my decimal point.

I think the video card is 256mb, but I'm not near it at the moment.  I bought the machine pretty souped up because my kids like to make movies. (We have Premiere Elements which is a great program for teenage movie makers.)

Teenagers and viruses, ugh.  Ugh.  Did I say Ugh?  The spyware has been much worse than actual viruses.  When I finally figured out how to "clean" the machine (armed with a bunch of programs recommended by people who know), what was on there was eye-popping.  Getting rid of (and patrolling for) spyware (that the programs could identify and remove) has helped stave off the BFBVS this long.

IT guy at work says I'm not allowed to do system restore.  Tells me the machine is so messed up at this point, I'd only be restoring a bit less mess.

Writing down the part where I should scan the back up before putting it back on the clean machine. That makes so much sense....also makes sense to keep as little as possible.  Rather than just dumping everybody's My Documents, I'll pick and choose what we save.  (Their movies are already burned to DVDs, as I didn't buy enough hard drive space to keep them on the computer, turns out.  Who knew that 80MB was way too little.) 

Oh, and their music.  I have to back that up.....

Last night, my husband says, we paid enough for the computer, why don't you pay somebody to fix it.  I said, I'd love to, but I want these %$#& teenagers to go through every step of the pain with me so they understand what happens when you just run around the internet pushing buttons randomly!!

 :P

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edit PS. - hyperthreading and The Sims, I think that is supposed to be problematic, based on research I've done trying to fix the game performance problems.  Turning it on and off on the afflicted computer, I couldn't see a difference in % of freezes, but if the game doesn't run perfectly after I re-install, I'll play with it some again.

Lord, I should have married a computer geek, what was I thinking.  Sigh.  Well, he can cook......

That's a great way for them to learn, actually.  :D Good tactic.

The best advice I can offer is this, it makes for a really interesting read, it will tell you what are the most necessary things needed..It's the one I use and no problems with the running of my game.

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST--2558-x-x-x&body_pagenum=1

Hope it helps. ;D

A good reinstall is indeed a good thing.  I do mine every 6 months of so.  It gets rid of the clutter and the bloat.  Amazing how much it improves performances. 

 I have my disk partitioned with 2 partitions.  That's one thing you might want to consider if you are reinstalling.  All the software and operating system goes on C: and the data goes on D: (including the documents and settings\name\ .... ).  This way, whevever I feel the need for a reinstall, I just perform the automatic reinstall for the machine.  No need to do a backup and all that jazz.

As for your kids, well I strongly recommend you give them restricted accounts.  Not only will it prevent them from snooping (and messing up) your stuff, but it will prevent a lot of virus and spyware from being installed.  The down side is you will need to install everything they want from your own admin account.  On the other hand, you know exactly what's being installed, so that's a plus. 

Also, make sure you patch to SP2 and include every current patch.  Keep the system uptodate with automatic update installs.  You should also switch to Firefox instead of Microsoft Explorer.  Less drive-by-installs with the former.  Lastly, get a good antivirus and Microsoft Anti-spyware installed for the kids.  If it was me I would desactivate them in MY account, for performance reasons when TS2 is running.  Or at least exclude TS2 from the scan. 

I wouldnt put any net nannies on your machine, not for teens anyway, you will only incite rebellion which you have to police and it will be a big pain in the butt, and of course you will come out the bad guy. I wanted to put a dl block, but realized I would have to police everything all the time and thats not what I want to teach my kid, its about learning personal responsibility not, because mom is a meanie.

No, make them sit with you and fetch you things when you do the clean up and reinstall so they can see just how long it takes and what goes into it, maybe even make them do some of the work (which is just sitting there watching the thing load really). Then get zonealarm, spyware guard, microsoft antispyware, spybot, adaware and last but not least avast personal home edition. That should pretty much cover all your bases, for free. Also installing Firefox almost completely stopped spyware all together. Of course if you can stomache it, stretch this procedure out as long as possible, an entire day or more, plus render the box useless for a couple of days prior- you know cause they broke it and now you have to fix it again...they will think twice about having to sit through that again.

Good luck, and make this a learning experience not just for yourself, but for your kids as well.

Ack Nectere, having all that installed would probably be worse than having a slew of spyware on your machine.

Haha, no it wouldn't. I've never heard of spyware guard and am suspicious of it on principle because of that, but the rest of the spyware stuff only runs when the user wants it to. Zonealarm only monitors the Internet connect. Turn off the connection and one can safely turn off the antivirus and firewall when playing. Honestly, if you have a decent firewall built into your modem or router (if you have broadband), you are not in a big need of a firewall on the machine (YMMV, but I've found it's unneccesary for average users). If you have dialup there isn't much that's going to try to access your computer anyhow, the connection is too slow.

As it is, I never bother turning off my antivirus software and my game runs about the same as it does with it off. I do have it set not to autorun, though, so it only monitors and scans when I tell it to.

Me too, I virtually never bother to deactivate McAfee - just in case I forget when I plug into the net again that it needs to be turned back on!  I just have the McAfee antispyware and firewall now.  I tried Microsoft when it first came out and it was a pain in the butt then - maybe they've improved it since though.

Reinstalling every 6 months seems a bit of task - my machine has been running for more than twice that time without any reinstalls - but I clean it up frequently.

Mcafee, Microsoft Antispyware, Zonealarm all run at the same time.  Not sure about spyware guard, but it sounds like it does.  Adware can be used to monitor your system but that might be only the paid version.  Can't remember about Avast but usually antivirus are memory resident.

In any case, it's conterproductive to have several anti-virus programs running at the same time.  They can interfere with each other.  Might be useful to have multiple anti-virus scanners and spyware scanners, if you suspect an infection or if you are very paranoid.  But I don't bother.  Anything that runs as a process will take up CPU time and a chunk of memory.  It can and does add up!

I have something like 10 processes running on my machine.  I turned everything off, except the sound control, that's useful for adjusting volume.  Oh and MSN Messenger, cause I occasionally use it.

I never keep a firewall for very long because they always end up bugging me ( I have a NAT on my router, so it's not that critical).  I turn off Mcafee to maximize memory, and I have never had a running antispyware program on my desktop, for the simple reason I never got spyware.  I only had a trojan once, and that was because I broke my own rule (never download from an unknown source...that guy on MSN is very much that).  Malware (virus and spyware) are like STD.  You get them because of unsafe practices.  If you know what not to do, you don't get them.

Yeah, pretty much.

I agree that all these programs use a huge chunk of memory, which is one reason why when I had to upgrade McAfee, I took the anti-spy and firewall options, as I thought that an integrated system might use a little less memory than three separate ones.  The McAfee firewall has never caused me any problems, and the only problem I get with the program as a whole is it's tendency to bring my game back to the desktop when it's installing an update.

I also occasionally scan with Yahoo for spyware - I found it actually found more of the stuff than the Microsoft Antispy, and it only takes a minute or two to do.  And I use WindowWasher to clean up when I've been on the net.

Well if you dont want to spend the money you can use the free systems in tandem. If you have money to burn then by all means go buy stuff. I dont have any issues running all that I suggested. Because even though my daughter has learned some vaulable lessons I still dont want to have to worry about picking something up. Adaware often picks up things that spybot doesnt and vice versa. SpywareGuard is a program that keeps anything from redirecting my browser settings and will detect anything that does, whether its from a program I installed or a website I visited. Now that I have micorsoft antispyware I could probably take it off, but I havent because it isnt harming anything. I am not paranoid, I just believe its better to be safe then sorry later. Because as I recently found out, I got a trojan from an innocent enough looking package which me some effort to clean up, thats when I installed Avast, a free antivirus program like mcafee (my mcafee had expired and I was too cheap to renew plus upgrade) suggested by Hook. (Thanks Hook! - have I told you lately how much I love Avast?)

Actually all those systems together use less memory than running firefox or mcafee. I also have process explorer to kill off everything if I want to play a memory intense game and I am not online. I am on dialup and Zonealarm has in fact detected at least 4 attempts to gain access to my computer in the last week so I have no idea what is meant that it isnt possible because I am on dialup. I also like it because it keeps certain programs that I have installed from accessing the internet as well, I dont want them phoning home.

I've been using avast! for a couple years now and I just love it! and it's the only anti-virus program I know of that also keeps an protective eye on my instant messengers so I don't have to worry about downloading inffected files thru them.

I didn't say it wasn't possible; I said there wasn't much that would bother. It's just not as likely that a malicious user is going to want to try to take control of a comptuer on dial-up than one that is just as open on a connection ten to one hundred times faster. I would be willing to bet that the access attempts were port scans and wouldn't have amounted to much. Also, the vulnerabilities for someone on dialup are quite different than those of someone on an unprotected broadband connection.

... I'm going to stop now.  :D I did this computer junk for three years to feed myself so I could go on allll day about it, but I'll spare everyone the boredom.

I've also found that my free antivirus program (AVG in my case) doesn't take up too much of my computer's processing power and RAM. The commercial products are quite bloated.

Well I cant say that I wasnt suprised that someone was trying to enter through netbios, each time its the same thing, and oddly enough only when I am on this site and on mirc at the same time.

I'm interested to know.  What was this innocent looking package?

Not at all.  I've got all of those except Spyware Guard (I use Spyware Blaster instead) plus Xclean Micro and the Blacklight Defender root-kit protection beta.  No problems AT ALL, I just update and run them all every couple of weeks or so and let ZoneAlarm and the Microsoft ASW run in the background at all times.  Also use Norton Systemworks (minus the antivirus) and CCleaner regularly to keep the bloat down.  My machine is squeaky clean.  XD

I do kill a bunch of processes with Process Explorer when I plan to do any intensive Simming, though.  (Though as long as I'm not running any large, Sim-heavy lots I can run it concurrently with ZoneAlarm, FireFox, AOL, and if I'm feeling particularly adventurous, Photoshop, and not take too bad a performance hit.)  Lots of RAM is a good thing.  XD

Anyway, windy_moon, reinstalling Windows isn't really such a big deal...just make sure you've got all your important stuff backed up and virus scanned, and keep telling yourself "It's only ones and zeroes!"  Letting the machine intimidate you is one of the biggest and most common mistakes people make.  You don't need to be an expert or have a degree to figure these things out, just pick up a good beginner's book on Windows, ask more experienced users or Google for answers when you're not sure, and if all else fails, you can always shell out the cash for a professional.  (Oh, you know what else you could do, is get a subscription to PC World.  It's an absolute gold mine of useful information.)

Good luck!  :)

angelyne it was through limewire, I thought I was dl a program (thats free for 30 days incidently) and it turned out to be a very very nasty trojan, unfortunetely at the time I didnt have an antivirus running and nothing else I had running caught it. I simply noticed it myself when it added a mess of cloaked trojan files in a couple of folders in limeware and elsewhere that werent there prior to dl the zipped package (and opening it, it was imbedded into the file I was trying to dl, it had cloaked itself as the program I wanted). It was a stupid mistake on my part. One I wont be making again, whats funny though is I know better...but still managed to pick up my very first virus/trojan (awwwe, little bugger). Needless to say I also wont be using Limewire anymore either, just too much of a risk to have on the machine with a teen in the house. Of course I made sure I told her about it, she was stunned that I got a virus, she also pointed and laughed....

Yeah, that bug was a nasty one.  Too bad it had to happen to you.  I still feel bad that I didn't get it and you did.  :'(

no biggie, I learned something, lil nectere learned something, I got avast and it did get cleaned up, I only lost my internet links which I had been planning to cull anyway.

I know, it seems like every couple of days I delete a few Internet links, but in no time at all it's a massive list again.  ::)

And it doesn't help when *someone* links about 5 tutorials for meshing, which of course necessitates its own link folder in my favourites.  ;)

oh heh.  Painful lesson.

There are no such thing as "innocent" looking software.  There are only safe downloading sites, site that stores a large number of programs (not P2P!!!) and that scans everything that it stores.  Also good when they allow feedback on a site as well.  I'm sure stuff can slip past, but it's unlikey it will stay there very long after people complain.

If whatever you are looking for is not on such a site, be sure to google the application +spyware and see if people are complaining about it.  Be especially wary about anything advertised that says "free".

If you must download from any P2P, know they are crawling with worms, viruses trojans ect.  For sure I'd turn on every single watchdog program I have playing with that.

Sometimes I venture forth in the more seedy part of the interet to find a serial number.  When I do it's with firewall on, security tightened to max, Antivirus on.  Even then I don't download cracked exe's.  That's asking for trouble.

This serves me well, as I have had no trojan, viruses, spyware of any kind in years, despite running no protection unless needed.

I remember a year or too back there was a problem at Paladin's Place, where if you went there you got bombarded with pop-ups.  My antivirus nuked everything and I decided not to hang around.  After that the site was down for quite a while, so I assume they were having to clean it up.  But after that, I always made sure I had a good pop-up blocker.

I downloaded the same program as nectere did, but fortunately my Norton and Windows firewalls started screaming and wouldn't let me unzip the package.

I have downloaded at least 3 full programs from Limewire (not to mention countless songs) and never had a problem, but I have learned my lesson that a full-size program is not going to be only 858mb.

Surely it depends on the program?

Yeah, it definitely depends on the program! I remember OpenOffice being a bit over 200mb, and it's a full-featured office suite.

Well, I'm sure there are programs that are exactly 851.8mb, but there are several all over Limewire, that are totally different programs (for instance, I saw Milkshape and Photoshop, both at the exact same size, but both should be a lot bigger), but it's unlikely.  For instance, Photoshop is about 37000mb when zipped up into a full package.

I think you might need a decimal point in there somewhere Blue  ;)

It also depends what you mean by a full program.

This is great info!  I'm going to have to C&P the info about the programs I don't have.

We've been online for about a gazillion years now and so far no one has ever landed a virus (knock on wood!).  We have rather set-in-stone rules about what goes onto the computers and only once in a while does something get past (like I said earlier, the 8-year-old's done a number on his dad's).

First off, no one is allowed to ever use browser mail.  Everyone has on-line accounts and the only way I ever access my ISP mail is through their website.  No one's allowed to download anything that's attached to an e-mail unless they've spoken with the person specifically and know it's coming.

We use Zone Alarm and Google's toolbar which also has a pop-up killer.  I have SpyBot and AdWare installed on my computer but have to admit I don't use them very often.  As a general rule I do routine maintenance every couple of weeks which includes deleting all cookies, emptying my internet cache, temp folders, etc. and defragging the hard-drive.

I know I probably sound like a meanie, but really am not.  The older kids have a computer in their room with an internet connection and they know if they mess it up they're going to have to fix it so they're very careful.

Those are very sound rules Misty.  That's one big port of entry for viruses eliminated. (email).

The other area of entry for viruses are downloading software from P2P networks.

Spyware is a little more difficult to avoid, as there are more ports of entry.  Common tactics are exploiting vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, so that's why you must be careful to always have the updates installed.  That's why I switched to Firefox.  It's a better browser anyway.  However the most common method of getting spyware is by installing so called "helper" software, like toolbars, Smillies, system Optimizers, and ironically enough, spyware removers.  Any software that is offered to you "free" from a popup should never be downloaded.  Advertising isn't free, and people usually don't give away things for nothing.  Apart from the Sim Community :)

IRC is a pretty good way to get viruses as well.  There was a comedy of errors over that in the first days of our home network - the mac user could use IRC as much as she liked and never have a problem.  But the connection she opened meant the PC running the DSL kept getting her viruses.  Took us a while to figure out that was where they were coming from, though.

I have one or less virus scanners running in the background of my computers, but I have four virus/adware/spyware scanners that I crack out every time there's so much as a hint of odd behaviour, or after I've installed a program from LimeWire or gone to dodgy Russian websites.  If I see ads for porn on any site I'm at, I scan.  Doesn't stop me using P2P programs or going to those sites, of course, I'm just aware of the risks.  Which, since I use Firefox, are actually quite small - I haven't had anything in months.  Anyway, the most massive, hard to remove infestation of nine or ten different things I ever had?  Came from Tripod, who were supposedly a legitemate webhost.  It took me over six hours to get rid of it all.

Spyware and adware are gonna happen, whether you use P2P and go to dodgy places or not.  I'm the dodgy one, my sister's browsing habits are mostly clean.  I spent over an hour removing spyware from her computer last weekend, which only one out of her three scanners picked up.  (The two programs she paid for, Ad-Aware and her virus scanner, both missed it.  Bazooka, the teeny weeny freeware program, picked up four seperate infections.  The more scanners you have, the better.)

Well, Yahoo used to pick up loads of things on mine, stuff the Midcrosoft Antispy ahd missed!  But now I have the McAfee package installed, it doesn't find anything!  So as far as I'm concerned, one payment to McAfee to upgrade was more than worth it!

I had PC-cillin for a year and thought it was pretty good till my darlin' neighbor installed NOD32.  Well, I kept getting these really annoying messages telling me of some dodgy file I had.  Everything started slowing right down and I'm thinking that Mr Neighbor put a crap Virus Scanner on my poor lil' puter; so yank Mr neighbor back and I found out that this dodgy file had been sitting there for about 7 months without being picked up by Pc-cillin!  Not happy Jan.  It's all good now though.

Report from the re-installation front:

Well, you all were right. It's not that hard, just tedious.  Time collecting and sorting all of the installation disks, time figuring out what should really be installed and left beihnd...time trying to read teeeeeny numbers with 44 year old eyes.

Good news is:  a smooth running PC with the basics all installed, more programs (like Photoshop and Premiere) to follow.

Bad news is;

I lost my %%$#% Sims!

 :'(

Stupid communication glitch between me and the 12 year old.   He was in charge of backing everything up while I was doing other things last night.  He kept running to ask me questions about this and that he was backing up, kept telling me how long things were taking to copy, told me about the final file he made..... I assumed he put them on the external drive which we'd hooked up to the computer.

Turns out, he'd made another big folder on the C drive, which at some point he intended to move to the external.   ???

This was perfectly logical to him, but never occurred to me.  I tried to check the contents of the external before I started reinstallation, but the computer was giving me such a fit at that point, I decided to assume he'd done what (I thought) he said he'd done.

Sigh.  89 Sims were lost this early this morning, kinda like the death star in Star Wars.  My onlly neigborhood for a entire year. 

Trying to tell myself how lovely it will be to have a fresh start. I swore I wouldn't have the heart for it, and then I turned around and reinstalled all of my Sims disks...and just spent an hour on the MATY fixes and hacks.

Game is running beautifully at the highest specs.  If only I had my Sims to enjoy!  :'(

Well that sucks the big one, Wndy Moon.    :(  But cheer up, it can be nice to just start over and perhaps do something new (this may not be a help to you at all, but I try)

And never trust a 12-year-old with anything IMPORTANT!

You're very sweet.

I never knew what to say to folks here who lost their Sims, other than to offer sympathy.  What can you say....(other than a silent prayer of gratitude that it wasn't your Sims.  ;D

I'm keeping a stiff upper lip.  The kid cried, I felt bad for him...and even my husband was properly horrified at the 89 deaths. (which surprised me!)  He did chuckle when I wailed "And Maria and Penelope were pregnant!"

Downloads...downloads, checklist downloads...MATY, Inge, Merola....still need CEP and SimPe .... some clothes off of AroundTheSims2, haven't done the furniture there (which I cannot live without).

Bad News:
a couple hundred downloads down, must be a thousand to go

Good News:

They are going to be hyper organized this time around.

ZZ wrote:


I suck. Put that in the newsbox!!  :D

I disagree.  Spyware is not gonna happen unless you let it happen.  That stuff has to get installed on your pc somehow, and it doesn't happen by magic.   You either have to a) get it as a tag along program you have yourself installed or b) get it via a drive-by install.

A is prevented by being extremely careful about what you install (google and a good AV is your friend there) and B is prevented by locking down your machine.  If you go to dodgy sites, make sure you have all patches installed on your machine.  If you use Firefox get the NoScript plugin.  It disallows scripts being run by your browser, unless you specifically allow it.  If it can't run, it can't install can it?  If you use IE, setting your security settings to their highest, when going to a dodgy site.  Not only will this tactic prevent drive-by install, but you get way less pop ups too.


Windy_moon,  I'm sorry to hear about your sims.   I'll go further than ZZ, never trust ANYONE  but yourself with a backup.  When I reinstall a computer at work for someone, I always make a full backup even if they said they backed up their data. 

I'll second that! and if you use floppys or cd-rws or dvd-rws, never wipe them and reuse them unless it is a much older backup and you have a more recent backup!


I once trusted my now-ex-husband to backup my stuff(stupid shit computer needed to be reformatted again) using floppys (it was before cd-rws) First he wiped out my old backup(which I asked him not to do) and attempted to make my new backup...and couldn't because the damn computer wouldn't let him and I lost everything!


*hugs Windy_moon*