More Awesome Than You!

I have the combined hood that SaraMK posted (which is heavenly, BTW). Pleasantview looks perfect. The Tricou, Specter, Curious, Beaker, Monty, Capp, and Summerdream houses (and something in Bluewater Village, but I don't remember what) all flash red and blue and red blue...on the neighborhood view only. Open the house, wander around--all's well. But on the neighborhood view--not so much. I've also checked La Fiesta Tech: like Pleasantview, it's fine.

My first assumption was that the neighborhood was loopy. It's only in that view, so it doesn't bother me much. Second assumption--I screwed up. I can deal with either (nothing appears wrong in the view I see 99.99% of the time).
BUT
I created a new neighborhood in which to build/test/mess with. I built a lovely new dream home for SimElfPuddle, and left the lot to save and move it...but it's flashing blue and red! Pick it up and move it, the ground flashes red. Set it down, the lot's flashing blue and red.

Any ideas about what I broke?

Do you have an nVidia video card and if you do, have you updated the drivers recently? The newer drivers are really screwy, so a lot of people have gone back to previous versions. 77.77 seems to work great, so if you think this is the problem, try going back to that version. Flashing stuff is often a driver issue, though not always.

Have you installed or uninstalled any EPs or stuff pack, or even a patch, right before you noticed this happening?

the 84.21 drivers are fantastic, but the game doesn't pick up on the upgrade for some reason, so they only work well after reinstalling the game. I got that flashing after installing the new drivers, and also in hoods with a ton of decorations/houses. I backed up all my hoods and reinstalled the game, they work beautifully now. Also, I deleted a bunch of the decorations in the one heavily decorated hood I had.

You probably needed to delete the userProps file in My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config. That's the file that tells the game what video card and drivers you've got for the purpose of setting various options.

Yes, I'd just installed OFB.

Because it's late/early, let me repeat what I'm "hearing" to see if I understand....

Step 1) delete "the userProps file in My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config" (Is that one of the ones the game will re-create upon restarting?)

If that doesn't work, then

Step 2) Reinstall the game and pray.

Yes?

So this isn't a problem with the houses/lots/neighborhoods....my game doesn't think I have the right computer. But I do (since everything else is running well), so nothing's going to go splodie ? And would this also be why my fish disappeared? No, don't answer that. That's being dealt with on another thread I know.

Can't hurt, anyway.

Yes, the file will be regenerated the next time you run the game.

Deleting that file will cause all the settings (graphics, sound, etc) to revert to "default," so just be prepared to change them back to how you like them.

Wonderful, Thanks This Is Great, etc.etc.

Bless you both for being up late and helping. I'm off to take a short nap, and then I'll see about fixing this. I'll let you know tomorrow evening how it went.