More Awesome Than You!

Lately I've been having problems viewing hair and clothes both in cas and when sims need to buy or alter their appeareance! :-\

Everythime I click on the arrow to go to the next set of content, it takes the game like at least ten minutes to load! :o I tried to see what's happening with the Maxis Mnager tool thingy but it won't work! Before it was working just fine...

Then I tried with Clean installer and i saw lots of files in pink as "empty package". I disabled a great some but I still have the same problems... What do you guys suggest me to do?

Is it my pc or did my game get bugged?

It sounds like your game has started corrupting its files.

Yikes! That sounds really bad.

I think you should try to update your drivers, and defrag drive C. Each time I sense slow motion in my game, I call the technician (scared to do things myself), and after he updates my drivers, the game become to run faster. Sometimes he suggests to update the graphic card, but this doesn't help much as the drivers update.
Just a week ago I bought the latest X-800, but only after the drivers update and the defrag, the game returned to it's fast performance.

It worth a try.

thanx for he advice..., I'll try defragging..

Also, if you've been using the Installer to install houses, check in your Downloads folder for files ending in things like .0001, .0002, .0003 (all with the same long file name.)  If you have a lot of them, use SimPE to check that they are duplicates, and if so, remove them.

Thanx ZZ ;D

I was wondering baout those "empty packages" tho?? are they supposed to be there? I removed a software by accident while trying ot remove Datgen from my pc, so I did a "restore" to get it back and indeed, when I tried to change the look of my sim, it went a lot faster, still it took it0s time to load... ::)

I still need to test everything after the defrag, and i didn't browse through everything so there may still be some problems, there..
And of course, I'll be looking fore those files ZZ :D

I once found hundreds of the darned things, so now I only use the Maxis installer if I have to, those long file names are such a damn nuisance!  Look out in particular for long file names which are anything between 3 and 100 MB, these could be downloaded sims or extra copies of downloaded houses!  Unlike the empty files, these will actually clog up your Downloads and take space you could be using for stuff you actually want!

 ???How do I use Simpe to see if they are copies? ???

And another thing, I went to a lot of mine and I have a SERIOUS problem with it!
The heli carpool arrives and the game starts lagging tremendously! then I got a message saying windows has not enough virtual memory???

I don't understand, I've been taking the carpool just fine, the game has been performing just fine... All of a sudden it's acting like this??? >:( I wish I could know what went wrong, so I can fix it....

I'll try removing my downloads folder and then playing the game

ok, I figure out the SimPe thing..still no "copies" there..what's going wrong?

I've always used Clean Installer to find duplicates. Anything shaded in pink IIRC is either a dup or empty package. Dups will also have the same MD5#, which is sort of a digital fingerprint. So even if the copy was renamed, if it's essentially the same file it will still have the same MD5#.

http://sims2pack.modthesims2.com/

You can also up your Virtual memory, but it's better to let windows do it.  I used to get this happen a lot before I upped my RAM to 1GB, but it seems to have stopped now.  One other thing, have you tried closing your Internet connection and then exiting your Antivirus and Firewall?  Just be careful to activate them again if you decide to go on the net.

Thanx Mototki! ;D I DID see the pink and empty packages! I'm going to get rid of them as of right now! I was wondering what they are and why they are pink..since the program uses red to classifyhacks...

How do I up my virtual memory, zz? I sure could use thath 1G! ;D Thanx to you too, I was getting despeerate...

I totally forgot! I got Nightlife installed already (I know, I know, I'm BIG traitor ;D) I used a "clean" TS2 folder to do so... everything is running just fine(besides karaoke machine that is ::))

What do you guys suggest? Should I wait till I upped my virtual memory before using the old folder? Or will deleting the duplicate packages be enough?

 ???

Can you explain more about the karaoke problem?  Any error logs?

I hear on the BBS that is lack of singing when it is on,...I will have to check it out once I get home and load mine.

I honestly can't remember how I did it, but there are instructions in the Help and Support section in the Start Menu.  But as I say, it's not the best thing to do, and certainly not if you up it by a lot, although if windows is taking you back to the desktop each time it does it, it can be frustrating, I know.  If you do decide to do it, I'd try just a little at a time.  Also, I close my game fairly frequently (have to if I want to put something in it or take something out, anyway) and if I then defrag and reboot everything gets stored away tidily and I start with about 850MB of available RAM and the game only starts to get choppy when I'm down to about 150-200, which has probably more to do with the new outcrop of red in my defrag diagram than with the actual amount of RAM left!

O_o

Defragging immediately after every gameplay session is a little excessive - it really only needs to be done once a month or so! If you actually NEED to do so, you should start worrying about your hardware dying.

Are you sure you don't have the NPC/Slowdown bug on that lot?  I've never had the virtual memory message but I have plenty of RAM and HDD space.  One sign it's the slowdown bug would be the time of day it starts, if it's around the time a service NPC is due to turn up then that's likely your problem.  This link is a Carpool portal fix by Erzengel on modthesims2, it seems both the Carpool Bug and the NPC/Slowdown bug may be caused by the same thing. 

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=79045&page=1&pp=25

Crammyboy has a 'preventative fix' to help stop it happening in some instances (as well as the mailbox/trashcan disappearing) which is linked to from Erzengels post, I think it pops up a warning dialogue box when a portal goes missing too.  Hope this works for you!

I get the virtual memory problem occasionally too, although I haven't tried disconnecting my broadband connection so I'll give that a go.  My main problem though is the sound.  I don't have any singing at all with the karaoke and now I discover there is no sound from the bowling alley.  I get the same messages with both, that the sound files can't be initialised or aren't available or something.  I am going to try reinstalling to see if that makes any difference.  Then there's the weird behaviour of the Matchmaker, supplying dates that are turned-off by the things my Sims have when full price has been paid ... that can't be right.  And last night I went to a Downtown lot and had a constant error about the cook.  Everytime I hit delete, she disappeared and came right back and another error, if I hit Reset she jumped back and another error ... my Sim had been invited out with a group and it took ages to get all 7 or 8 of them away and into the taxi while all this error stuff was constantly going on.

As far as the game changes are concerned, I think Nightlife is great, but if they're not all working ... well, it's very frustrating to say the least.  I really do want to hear all the sounds, especially the singing.  My sound card isn't old and the drivers are up-to-date; I actually have quite good sound quality as it happens.

Listening to no- or low-Creativity Sims sing karaoke is downright painful. And they seem to be the ones most attracted to that object! They'll turn down your Sim's request to sing a duet, claiming they don't want to make a fool of themselves, then turn right around and sing solo. We need an option to "turn hose on singer."

I noticed that even my Sims with full creativity were being turned down, then I realised it has nothing to do with their creativity, but everything to do with the relationship.  In other words, they'd rather sing a duet with a friend who would put a cat to shame than with an acquaintance who would give Frank Sinatra a good run for his money.

I've also noticed that most people take no notice of the singers.  It's not like Superstar at all, where everybody would crowd round to listen, nor do they appear to be able to earn any money from it.  Most of the time they just sing (or rather mime in my case) and then stop, with no interest shown from anyone else at all.  That's rather disappointing.