More Awesome Than You!

Okay, I'm so frustrated right now I could just kill something, so instead I will throw myself on your mercy. Maybe you can help me, because in spectacular EA fashion the forums or technical support are not at all helpful.

Last night, I installed Seasons. It loaded, added in my cc (sans hacks) and played beautifully for a couple hours. Suddenly it crashed to the desktop without an error. By then, it was very late so I just turned off my computer and went to bed. Today, I go to play and the game won't open. I get the splash screen, then nothing. If I go to the task manager, I can see the process doing it's thing, but still no game loading going on.

The EA people suggested that I:

-Update my drivers. My drivers are up to date
-Disable my antivirus/firewall. Yeah, whatever. It worked just fine with them on last night. Still, gave it a try. Nothing.
-Turn off daemon tools and the like. Yeah, fine, except again, it worked last night with all that running, and I am not getting a cd error. Still, gave it a shot, and still not working.
-Reinstallation. Yep, tried that. Woohoo, a waste of my life! New installation, same problem.

So, anyone have any less asinine suggestions for me?

1: EA are as useful as apes on crack
2: I'm going to come back to you

did you try the old stand bys, like deleting the cigen and groups.cache files?

did you try removing your downloads temporarily (including regular ole cc)?

i thought i read something about some cc not working properly. dunno if that's been verified, but i'd try to run the game without any cc at all.


Ste

Yeah, I've tried all those things, first thing. Still no love.

I hate my game.

Maybe you've got a corrupt game disk

Maybe, but it installs fine and it worked initially

Stupid suggestion - remove the Neighbourhoods folder temporarily. If it reboots then you'll just have to replace each Neighbourhood in turn.

I admit I'm reaching here.

When you uninstalled, did you do it manually? And did you just uninstall Seasons, or everything?

I manually uninstalled, including ripping all the entries out of the registry, then reinstalled. I haven't uninstalled and reinstalled everything yet, I am loathe to do that.

Apparently, the solution to my problem was to get completely frustrated and throw my hands up in disgust, then go watch Mythbusters for an hour. I came back and magically, the whole thing works just fine now.

I guess I'll never know...

It's probably Safedisc throwing a wobbly. That happens all the time.

Are there any other solutions to this?  Mine has suddenly decided to do the same thing and I've tried everything I can think of short of doing a complete reinstall.  It started happening the next time I tried to play after I did a save on exit, which I don't usually do because I once lost an entire sub-neighbourhood after one (probably due to an unrelated glitch but it's habit now) but I was really tired and didn't want to wait for a save before falling into bed. 

I have the same problem, except that the game does show up in Task Manager for a few minutes while the light on the CD/DVD drive flashes.  When I removed the entire Documents/.../Sims2 folder, the game failed to recreate the various subfolders and files, except for the logs folder.  There it generated twenty files, all of them 0 kb and empty of information.  This has happened after a half dozen reinstalls, including one fresh install of the whole thing (base game and all EP's).  My computer more than meets the minimum specs.  I've updated everything that can be updated, and even downloaded that stupid Safedisk thing Maxis recommends.  At this point the game cannot be played.  As I said in my tech support request to maxis, if this can't be resolved, it looks like I'm done playing Sims.

ElenaRoan: Silly question, but have you deleted the groups.cache file?

Ionopachys: Have you tried loading the game with a mini image or .exe from gamecopyworld?

I'm afraid I have no idea what a mini image is, and I've never heard of gamecopyworld.

After looking up gamecopyworld, I will try that next.  In case that fails, what is a mini image and how would I use it? 

Thank you for your help.  You're the first one to offer any new suggestions outside of EA's tech "support" FAQ.

A mini image will allow the game to load without having the disc in the drive. You'll have to download a couple things to use it: daemon tools and sd4hide are what I use. The FAQs for those are pretty easy to follow. You can get the image at gamecopyworld as well. I prefer to use the image rather than a cracked .exe, personally. These should help if your problem is rooted in copy protection issues.

EA's "support" is notoriously bad. My cat could do better, because at least she wouldn't regularly give the wrong answers.

You don't need the daemon tools or to mount it, all you need is the hacked exe. What's stupid is I torrented it at first, so I didn't have to wait for EB Games to get off their asses and ship, and then when I got the disk, I reinstalled. But to get the damn thing to load every time, instead of 1 out of 3 or 4, I had to put back in the hacked exe!  ::) Does the patch maybe fix it? (Okay, I know, what am I thinking? LOL)

The cracked exe worked.  Thank you so much. 

So basically they implemented some new copy protection device that is broken on some machines, even with the safedisk update?  And I suppose that with the DMCA it is illegal for me to use the cracked exe, even if it's the only way I can use the software I legally purchased.  I really, really hate these corporations.

Yep. Copy protection is idiotic and makes pirates of the most honest. But it's not illegal for you to use the .exe, as you bought the game. No matter what EA would have you believe.

Glad it worked for you  :).

I use an image to avoid disc clutter and typically get a hung Sims2EP5.exe process. I'll go with the replacement .exe route.
Now the real challenge is finding a cracked executable for the Seasons patch. At the moment, there's no need though.

Well, yes, technically under the DMCA, any circumvention of copy protection, whether you've bought the disk or not, is illegal. Heck, technically, even TALKING about it on this forum is illegal.  Except that EA is back to giving out instructions on mounting the games because this isn't the first EP that's needed it, it's just the one that needs it for the most people.  ::)  Regardless, EA isn't going to go after people like us who've bought the game and are using the crack to run. Companies are generally more interested in the people doing the cracking in the first place and then the ones downloading the entire game, not just the exe.

No, no, no. I seem to remember that the DMCA only affects websites hosted in the US. MATY is hosted in Malaysia. And to those looking for a fixed exe:

Link. (http://m0006.gamecopyworld.com/games/pc_the_sims_2_ssn.shtml#The%20Sims%202:%20Seasons%20v1.0%20[MULTI%5D%20No-DVD/Fixed%20EXE)

Note that this is for an unpatched Seasons only, so you may need to reinstall Seasons to get it to work.

They would also never try it in court, as they would lose, which would open them up to a whole lot of crap they don't want to deal with.

Why would they lose?

Because they are attempting to prevent people from using a product they have bought and legally own. Copy protection itself is very iffy, legally, because of the problems it causes for consumers.

Sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you were saying they would lose if they took the original crackers to court, not the hapless endusers.

Aah. That is an interesting question, actually -- while there's all sorts of stuff forbidding reverse-engineering, I don't think most judges would punish someone who only made a min-image or cracked an .exe. It's not something the big game companies are going to try out, either, at least not until they are more assured that they would win than they are now. There's a lot of gray area there.

True, though those considerations didn't stop the music companies from pursuing ordinary people to ludicrous lengths. I think the overwhelming numbers of people doing illicit stuff with files is possibly a mitigating factor also.

Most people copy a thing or two, loan it to mates, etc etc - petty larceny really. There was one chap in a town nearby who actually advertised in the paper to sell CD/DVDs - he got done for about $150K. Another bloke trawled his illegally burned stuff round the Auckland markets for about four years before he was done, so I don't expect the police at my house in a dawn raid anytime soon!

My now-husband used to work for a bookshop that specialised in (weird) underground books and videos. The owner of the shop used to buy legitimate copies of the films, make several illegitimate copies of each, and then rent them out to people. I honestly don't know how he got away with it.

So just to be clear, I can't use the patch with the cracked exe?

No, because the patch replaces it with a new one, and will barf if the existing .exe is different from the one that came with the game.

I keep the original exe in the same folder, I just rename the file extension to 'old'. Then if I need the patch, I change the old filename to finish in .exe and the cracked file to end in something else and Bob's your uncle.

So you can restore the original exe, run the patch, then switch back to the cracked?

Yep. Because you don't have to run the game, patch looks for .exe, finds .exe, does job, is happy.  :)