More Awesome Than You!

Problem's this: Lots disappear from bin and previously also from two neighborhoods (of which one, Pleasanview, was played and the other, Strangetown, was not).  ???  This all happened after I installed the phone hack, the wash hands after using toilet -thing and also lot syncer.  At the same time I entered one house in customhood, installed the lot sync device and my sim like all others in the hood instantly became jobless, friendless, their aspiration meters hit rock bottom and they lost their personality points.  This happened to all, including pets.  I thereafter uninstalled the lot sync thingy and was forced to reinstall the game as nothing else would fix disappeared lots, not even recovering an older backup. :o

I since have noticed that the lots again disappeared from bin when I installed the toilet hand wash hack only.  :'( I did not think to check the effect on Pleasanview or Strangetown.  I'm going in game again but this is a slow process because after every time I try something and when something goes screwy I can't just swap the Sims2 folder to an older one since it doesn't seem to fix problems caused, only if I remove The Sims2 folder, let the game create a new one and then by hand add my customhoods in does the game work.  But I can't add Pleasantview, like I mentioned, it doesn't work, lots show up if I only put in the lots folder but adding characters doesn't seem to bring them back I only have the default characters.  So the house where Oldies lived and where mr. Oldie died is in the neighborhood but mrs. Oldie is in the bin with her husband ...  :-\

What else...  I've been dealing with this for quite a few days now and it's put me off my game... I have not other hacks in game.  Downloads, yes - objects, clothing, hair, not too many houses and no downloaded sims.  I can't use Cleaninstaller when installing stuff because I'm on a Mac.  I should have no conflicting software, even if I've only had this notebook for 6 months.  I did install Norton Antivirus 10.0 for Mac the same day I first tried out the hacks...   :-[

But I can't think of what went wrong and ruined three months of game play by emptying all Pleasantview... It was like there never was lots in the first place, totally empty...  So I guess I'm looking for help in understanding if I did something wrong.  And how to prevent me from doing it again.  I would have liked the hacks I mentioned, I'm always tied to my notebook to check what family to play next...  and the phone irritates me more than my husband does three days a month.  But I'm a bit worried about putting them in game...

well, hopefully someone can shed some light on this form me  :)

Not sure if you've done a search already on disappearing lots.  This seems to be a problem other people have had as well.  So far I have not seen a definitive solution proposed.

In your particular case, there could be a number of causes.  Incompatible hack is one of them: make sure you are using the correct version of the mods/hacks in your game (i.e. if you have nightlife, make sure you have the NL version of the hacks).  For example, in and of itself, the phone hack should not cause problems.

Since you are not using cleaninstaller, a corrupted downloaded lot may be the problem.

Thanks Jolrei.
Yeah, no, I didn't do a search on this forum, didn't think to because I've done searches on many others and came up with nothing.

It's not the phone hack.  At first I didn't think it was the lot sync either but after adding some more of my downloads back into game my game unexpectedly quit while I tried to load my custom neighborhood.  I'll check back and try to narrow down possible conflicting downloads...

But so far only the toilet hack seems to leave me with empty lots bin.  ???

I have all EPs but Seasons, haven't gotten it yet because it hasn't been out long for Mac and for some reason my order has been delayed. 
I haven't downloaded any new lots in a while and since they all worked before I'm inclined to think it's to do with something else...