More Awesome Than You!

The past 2 days I have restarted a PV (again) after a long break with WoW and for the first time ever my game keeps crashing.

Well, not exactly crashing - I get a blue screen and hang.  After learning to save my game frequently and playing 5 houses for a week or so I think I have narrowed it down to always happening when the Leader of the Pack comes onto a lot.  Checking in SimPE, I find that I have 2 "Balins".

I think I may have brought this on myself when I first started because for the first time ever I used the pet teleporter so that Chester could get to know him (Balin) and get nibbled.  Afterwards, it seemed like the wolf thought he lived there (although I didn't have his icon, he never left) so I used the pet teleporter again to clear the lot of pet visitors. 

Everything seemed to be working fine and the other wolves don't seem to cause any problems but I think my game is now cofused about whether it has a "leader of the pack" or not.

So... my question is this - if I delete the 2nd Balin's character file is there any way to make sure my game doesn't try to regenerate him again?  Or should I just delete both Balins?  And if I delete character files do I need to delete other stuff?  I only use SimPE to look, I am too illiterate to risk changing anything but I am thinking I am going to have to.

Any suggestions?

The name might just be a coincidense.  Maxis made a very small pool of pet names to pick from, so there tends to be duplicates.  I have two Baxters, it's not a problem.

While it's possible it could be related to the LOTP, the crash you describe is very much like what's discussed in this thread: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6580.0.html

Gwill, I think you were right, thanks for the info.  I didn't know that the same name could be used for 2 wolves.

Orikes, I think that thread you linked explained it all even though as a die-hard Nvidia user I was flabbergasted.

After posting here and getting fed up with that hang I removed my downloads folder completely, uninstalled and reinstalled pets and lo and behold got the same damn problem without ever interacting with the LotP.  Even when I don't actually hang anytime a wolf comes on the lots I slow down considerably (like when a pet comes home from work after a promotion).

I think what confused me is that I have played Pets for awhile without ever seeing this but I have also done 2 things since Pets - downloaded the latest Nvidia driver and bought Happy Holiday something or other (2005/2006 combo pack thingy since I skipped it last year).

I *think* I had played Sims after the Nvidia driver but I know I hadn't since that stuff pack.  Maybe I finally just hit the threshold or something.

At any rate - I rolled back my driver and so far (knock on wood)  I haven't hung.  I do however still get that slowdown when pets come home and when wolves enter the lot which kind of ticks me off.  I haven't even owned this puter for that long and I don't think it is that bad (I was thrilled when the game defaulted to all the highest setting for the first time ever for me).

I am not ready to give up on Nvidia yet (I had nightmare problems with my ATI card) but I am certainly not as complacent about not even considering that my graphics card is the culprit.

The last NVidia card I ran TS2 on was an FX5600XT. It ran tolerably, if not exceptionally, and did not produce any weird glitches. This was back in early-NL. I'm inclined to think that if Nvidia cards TRULY were the sole source of a problem this severe, there would be a LOT of screaming, which implies that it's your card in combination with some other issue, such as insufficient power supply. Downgrading to much older drivers would likely reduce the ability of the system to use the card's features, thus reducing its power consumption, and potentially hiding the real problem. And that's why you need a 3 kW power supply like mine. :P

have you tried twojeffs fix for that?
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6300.0.html

Thanks to the Lot Debugger's new, shiny options™ you can have a werewolf sim with a click. Adieu, LotP.

(Will you be adding the vampire option, JM?)

How did I miss that new shiney from TJ??  Thanks Sleepycat!

TJs college adjuster has a 'make me a vampire' option on it already -- it can both make and cure.

Thank you, Joe!