More Awesome Than You!

I've just recently reinstalled my game (base, Uni, NL and OFB) after a problem with my laptop, unrelated to the Sims.  I now have a slight annoyance with the startup, there seems to be about a 3 -5 minute gap between the EA games screen and the Maxis icon screen.  This never happened before as it would always go straight between the screens in a matter of seconds.  There are no other problems when I reach the startup movie and loading screen as these load as quickly as before.  If I tab out of the process during the 3-5 minutes of blankness it then refuses to load and task manager tells me the program is not responding.  I have installed the OFB patch (the latest one) but that didn't seem to help matters.

Has anyone else had this problem?  Or anyone any ideas on how to fix it?  Any advice would be much appreciated as I'm am getting irritated with it's lack of awesomeness  ???

Sounds like the CD check. Get Daemon and a mini-image. This shaves a lot of cycles of the startup routine.

You can also try to disable the movies, they're useless anyway and waste startup time: TS2\TSData\Res\Movies --> rename the .movie files to .movie.off. Do the same for the logos found in the other XP installs (NL has a new one, and so do the shopping packs).

Thanks for your help Jordi.  I think I'm having a bit of a problem mounting the mini-image with Daemon.  I've followed this tute http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=131341 but now if I try starting OFB through the start menu or the icon on my desktop it asks for the disc.  I did manage to start it the first time as I'd left the disc in the drive but quickly ejected it just after I had doubled clicked my desktop icon, and it carried on loading.  However I did notice that the original problem of the unawesome 3 minutes of blankness was still there.  I had previously renamed the movie files as suggested.

Any further suggestions re the mounting?  As to be honest I do like the idea of not having to have the latest disc with me everytime i want to play Sims, regardless of whether it solves the blankness problem (which doesn't look likely).  Also anyone any idea why I'm getting the blankness if unrelated to the CD check?

Thanks

Sorry, forgot to mention that for OFB you also need a disk hider utility.
Google for SD4hide, or use the Securom Loader (or ASR) from  this page (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php?mode=ViewCategory&catid=2). Since ASR can be done by amending the shortcut and does not require further manual action I much prefer it.

If you remove all your downloads, does the game also take 3/4 minutes to load? If not, it may be that you simply have too many downloads. Try cleaning some.
Especially custom meshes can cause delays.

No problem, but should I be copying the asr.exe file to D:/Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Open for Business/TSBin?  (I'm going by the following instructions)

Copy AntiSecuROM.exe and AntiSecuROM.dll (the AntiSecuROM.dll only exist if you are using SecuROM Loader 1.1, version 1.2 generates a dll file when it is started, so if you are using SecuROM Loader 1.2 the only thing you need to copy is the asr.exe file) to the directory where the protected EXE file is located.
Create a desktop shortcut to the AntiSecuROM.exe you just copied (right click on it, select send to -> Desktop)
Right click your new desktop shortcut and select properties. In the target field, add this : -r followed by the name of the game's EXE file. Example : for Star Wars Empire at War it will look something like this : "C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Empire at War\GameData\AntiSecuROM.exe" -r sweaw.exe
Now click ‘Change Icon' and browse to the game's EXE file to get the icon from it and then click OK.
That's it! Now all you need to do to run your game is mount the image in Daemon Tools, cancel the autorun screen and double click your desktop shortcut.

Also do I need to delete the original asr.exe file from my desktop (as a result of extracting the rar file on my desktop) as there will be a shortcut there instead?  Sorry I'm a bit technically challenged so I thought I'd ask to make sure!

Also regarding the downloads, because I had to reinstall everything on my laptop, I lost all my previous downloads for the game (mental note to self - backup in future).  I had to start collecting afresh so the first time I ran the game, the beginning of the age of 3 minutes of blankness, I only had the most critical MATY hacks in there.  Although I have been collecting more downloads recently, the folder is still only currenly 441MB, majority of those hacks.  Pre-system reinstall, I must have had at least a gig of downloads.  However I do have a lot of hair meshes from XMsims so I will try taking it out and seeing if that makes a difference.

I have placed asr.exe in C:\Program Files\Daemon Tools\ASR\ myself.

Assuming you use the same path, what you want to do is right-click your TS2 shortcut. It will point to something like "C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSBin\Sims2.exe" (can't check actual path now!)

Change this to the following: "C:\Program Files\Daemon Tools\ASR\asr.exe" -r "C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSBin\Sims2.exe". Press OK.

From now on you should always launch TS2 using this shortcut, and it will hide your drives while TS2 is running (bypassing the CD check), and restore them once it's done (thus avoiding problems with other apps).

Oh, and delete your groups.cache file just in case. While I have run into problems with this file only once, others seem to have problems with it all the time.
It is trivial to edit your shortcut to automatically delete it by the way... just use a batch file.

Thanks I have put both my Sims folders and Daemon stuff on my D drive (the secondary internal HD) so I have changed the C:'s to D:'s in the shortcut you suggested.  It wouldn't accept this in the start in: path as it says it is not valid so I wondered if I need to use C: for the Sims part of the file name - but nope, that's not valid either.   However I just went and checked the C drive (as I know The Sims installs some essential files there).  I noticed that in the EA Games folders I only have folders for the base game, Uni and NL but not OFB, which doesn't sound right.  Do you think this might relate to the original blankness problem?

Also should I have installed Daemon on my C:?  Or is it ok on the D:?  I am thinking it might be best to uninstall OFB and reinstall to see if I can get it to spawn a folder in the C drive in addition to the data on the D drive (unless of course it was never meant to be there in the first place?).

Sorry if that makes no sense, my lack of technical knowledge makes it difficult to explain myself properly.

You can certainly install OFB somewhere else (like on a second harddrive) if you want, it should not cause problems. I don't use the default path myself, my Sims game is in C:\Games\TheSims2\ and OFB is in C:\Games\TheSims2\XP3-OFB\ for example.

Likewise it doesn't really matter where you install Daemon Tools or ASR: if your ASR.exe is in D:\ASR\ASR.exe replace "C:\Program Files\Daemon Tools\ASR\asr.exe" in my example with that. The same for your TS2 installation: although in this case you know the path, since it is already in your TS2 shortcut.

For shortcuts, if your path includes spaces, you MUST put quotes around it: C:\Program Files\ASR\asr.exe will be invalid, "C:\Program Files\ASR\asr.exe" will work. Blame Microsoft for this (I do!).

Well I've tried un and reinstalling OFB but no luck still blankness.  Still having problems changing the path for the TS2 shortcut, for some reason it seems unwilling to accept anything I try.  I think I may give it a rest and try again another day as my problem is merely irritating rather than terminal.

Thanks for your assistance though, much appreciated :D

For those unawesome among us, how do you do the batch file?  I fit into the all the time group.

Open Notepad (NOT WORD!)
Type the following in a new text file:

Replace PASTE SHORTCUT HERE with whatever is in the Target of the shortcut you normally use to launch the Sims.

Save the file as "Sims2.bat" or "Sims2.cmd" (inclusive quotes, or Notepad will call it Sims2.bat.txt). This creates it on your desktop.

Now use this file to launch TS2.

Thanks, Jordi.