More Awesome Than You!

I have a new and strange glitch (at least for me).

When I load a family, the load screen (that shows them all standing around) isn't up to date.  I have families where the offspring still show as babies but they're now children and the newest offspring aren't even present.

BUT, the screen that shows the different sim thumbnails (with name and aspriation level) shows everyone acurately. 

Also, I had a sim move out of one house and into the bin.  When I went to retrieve him from the bin, his name was correct, but the picture was of a completely different sim.  He moved into his new place without a hitch, but now his load screen STILL shows the wrong sim instead of him and his new roommate (and the wrong sim is still safely in the correct house).

Other than this crazy glitch, my game runs fine.  I'm worried this is a sign of impending doom for my custom neighborhood (by the way, I have no hacks/mods/dowloads/or third party content of any kind--100% vanilla maxis game here).

Any ideas what on earth is going on?

Thanks.

Thats the problem. A clean game doesnt mean a "safe game." You need to "awesomize" your game to avoid conflicts like this. There are so many bugs in the Sims 2 and it doesnt matter if you have patches installed or not. Its probably too late to actually recover from this, but if you were to start over, it would be a safer experience if you used "awesome hacks."

If you want to awesomize your game, a good way to start is by downloading the Directors Cut located here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/smf/index.php?topic=8.0
Choose the file that is labeled with the game you have. NO one is forcing you. Its just a suggestion.

That sounds alot like what was happening to my game when my neighborhood had a bunch of errors due to lotbinning sims.  I would look for the post JM made explaining the overstuffed neighborhood problem. 

I had this error before, and I did have an overstuffed neighborhood. That was also at the time when I didn't have any hacks/fixes from Pescado. Could it be caused by both?

I've got exactly the same thing going on in my game. It's been like this since I installed Nightlife.

The hood wasn't overstuffed when it happened (although it is now), I had the Directors Cut in my downloads folder and I don't lotbin sims (learnt my lesson long ago!)

It doesn't seem to cause me any problems and has just become annoying more than anything else.

I think it can also occur by continually reinstalling the game without making sure the registry is cleaned out.

When I had this happen, after asking around desperately, I finally ended up deleting my thumbnails and had the game regenerate them, and it updated finally. I believe it was a thumbnail file under Program Files/EA Games and not the regular thumbnails under My Documents - anyone else know for sure?

Incorrect family thumbnails is generally a harmless problem. It tends to eventually correct itself if you ignore it long enough.

I've always had this problem in my own game- don't worry about it. It doesn't affect anything, and after you load it a few times it eventually updates.