Oh, I haven't used the toy-making bench at all yet, and haven't played the game much since the EP, first I fixed a gazillion problems, then work got in the way, now I'm re-binning and sorting custom hairs.
But thanks for pointing that out, I'm off to build a toystore-house combo for one of my homeless sims!

Which water sprinkler? Did it come with ffs? I never saw the 'new' water sprinkler I can't have missed it. But then again, I could have missed it easily

Umm, I think he didn't mean that.
From answers.com:
SS1 (ĕs'ĕs') pronunciation
n.

An elite quasi-military unit of the Nazi party that served as Hitler's personal guard and as a special security force in Germany and the occupied countries.

[German, abbr. for Schutzstaffel : Schutz, defense + Staffel, echelon.]
Or maybe I'm wrong.

No, the hack is about social workers, not secret society, don't know if it's still compatible (with NL and OFB) though, just gonna try and see

I have the patch, and it doesn't stop me from deleting any cc. You can delete the meshes in a normal way like you used to, but for recolors, you have to buy the item, place on lot, and select the pattern tool (recolorer) and deleting is possible there. It is a bit of a hassle for just one recolor, I'm upset about the feauture being gone too. I wonder if maxis people even realized that.
I read somewhere, someone was complaining that he/she couldn't place objects on the road anymore with moveobjects on anymore (sinceOFB- I have the same annoyance and I've downloaded a fix for it-non awesome) and a maxoid was there talking about the OFB patch was there and he didn't know about it, said it wasn't deliberate. I think I read about it here actually, can't remember.
And yes, it does suck not being able to play properly and not know why. My UI panel didn't shake by the way, so I tried toggling between neighborhoods fine. The loading screens had no problems either, just as soon as the neighborhood or house loaded, disaster struck. Or sometimes, a few minutes later. I don't have this problem now, but I did remove a lot of stuff and still am, so I don't know if it has worked until I really play the game with all the cc I have left.

Venusy thanks, I could've gone and downloaded the directors cut, it never occured to me that it would be in there. But this was very helpful, thank you again, you can remove it now if you like
FatD thanks anyway, I got it now

I've already puckered my lips to be ripped off, but I'm updating my hacks but I can't find the sshack. I tried looking for it in ffs hacks, and searching it in the search box. Can somebody direct me to it?
 

No owning a community doesn't do that. I'm sure of it, because I thought my neighborhood was corrupt and created a new one from scratch. Made and decorated 3 houses and wham! Shaking is back, uh-oh. So now I'm still cleaning out downloads for a week now after work I'll probably be able to play next week- yay!)

I had this, it starts happening more and more each time. I got to a point when I entered my game, as soon as the neighborhood loaded, it would shake like hell. I tabbed out of the game and back in ,but it was a temporary fix. I thought it had to do with the graphics driver (or something wrong in OFB) so I tried older drivers, and did something sooo stoopid inbetween that I had to format my pc and start over (thank god I had a backup).

But now it doesn't happen as I've greatly reduced the number of downloads I have. I had 9GB's now I have 5Gb's worth. I'm not positive if that fixed it though, still waiting. I read on MTS2 or sims2community about some others having the same problem. But they had different graphics cards (someone had an ati radeon, I have nvidia) so I ruled out the driver problem. It never happened before OFB though.

7.79GB. 41,587 files, all in subfolders and sub-subfolders, very neatly organised. I wish my house was this tidy. More than half of it is recolors though, and when I take all the recolors out, the game loads in 7 minutes, with the recolors in, 35 minutes. I'm getting rid of more than half of the recolors now, doing it since last week I love having a lot of stuff, in real life I can't possibly afford all that.

You're absolutely right, I did think about that when I  bought the first 512MB add on. I simply thought it would be enough. I got ddr400, because 333 was more expensive, silly as nobody would want it anymore. I was sort of scared of buying 1gb at once. Now the 400DDR is even cheaper than when I bought it, I wish I'd waited a few more months until I had the money. Maybe I'll get rid of the 333DDR if I have to get rid of one of them. Or just change the timings, which I'm not sure how to yet.

I was having the same problem until 2 hours ago, I wish I could have read this 3 weeks ago (which obviously didn't exist, I know) so I could figure out why my pc was crashing randomly. Or I wish I could've read this 2 hours ago before I reformatted my C: drive and reinstalled windows for the 4th time in a few weeks (bad installation cd's are bad, m'kay) and finally had the same problem again and figured my new ram could be the problem. Sheesh.
So now I don't have to return it to the shop? I can still have more RAM?

 By the way, I kept getting 'windows crashed because of an unknown device driver error', but I got that message even when I had just installed windows. (no drivers, not even the graphics driver yet) When I took the newest ram out, I didn't get any more error messages. (but I did install the display drivers in between)

I had a 512MB 333DDR ram and added 512MB DDR400 6 months ago with no problems, then I got another 512MB 3 weeks ago, also DDR400, of the same make, kingston. (Then my PC went berzerk. Then I deleted a system file and had to reinstall windows from a faulty cd.)
I never knew about timings though, guess you live and learn, and get frustrated a lot. Dusty, do you have any google successes you can recommend, I can try that.

Thank everyone for your advice and 'Yes' DrBeast, you're right! I don't have hyperthreading technology- now how is that a good thing, not having some new technology Well I'm chuffed to hear that my processor is a good one, it has had no problems whatsoever since I built my pc (with my dad) 3,5 years ago.
Now I'm not very computer-savvy, but I have learned from many other problems as I go along. I had problems with my pc stating that overclocking had failed, but I didn't even know what overclocking was then! I read a few forum entries on different sites, but it's a bit hard to understand if a)english isn't your first language, and b) if you don't already know a lot about computers. Then I realised it was because at the last repair at the shop, the idiots hadn't placed the cpu fan in correctly, so it was heating and shutting down.

 But as far as I understand, overclocking is something a bit risky. I don't exactly know how to do it, but I remember something about it in bios settings (By the way I haven't updated my bios at all, too afraid of the complications coming with the lack of knowledge). Is is true it makes your hardware work with more power, giving a better performance, but with the downside of overheating? I remember reading a lot about fans. Is there a dummy guide for overclocking, as in how to do it, how much overclocking can my power unit take, what's the desired temperature after overclocking, etc.

(If I just get 512MB more RAM and never download a single object, recolor or bodyshop item again, will it work?)---> Pathetic I know, but will it work?

And getting rid of my downloads is going to be so tough! I'm a very organised downloader, I keep everything in separate folders, run cleaninstaller everytime I put in downloads, I have no duplicates at all. I'm a bit anal about it I guess, but I don't have themed neighborhoods, I build & decorate every house in a different style. Maybe I should  control myself a bit more I just got rid of some old maxis recolors, one by one, and weeded out an unimpressive 4,000 out of 45,000. Sheesh. 5 hours wasted.

Wobbling off now, I'll be back

*Edited to show error log from the sims most recent crash:

System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 76 Megabytes free.

This error log was generated with all my downloads, playing peacefully, when I got a sudden graphics corruption, all my grass turned sky-blue, I kept on playing that way for 5 minutes, then it crashed to my desktop, as the application was terminated. THAT's why I'm wondering if more RAM will fix my graphics problems, as all goes fine in clean games.

Please don't kick me if I love sim-shopping so much, I get them all the nice stuff I'll never have *crazy rant: I Love My Downloads!!!!!

Well I also had the "I'm Taking off now, goodbye" message from totally unknown sims, as they were leaving the lot. Who cares! I've got a sim on a date, doesn't know anybody else, very little time left and these annoying messages pop up constantly. Stoo-pid townies.

Well, nvidia sent me a reply telling me to install the latest drivers (DUH) But I did that anyway, and tried something else. I loaded a fresh game with only recolors (22,000 files, I didn't sort out new mesh recolors, just all recolors and maxis items, so needless files) and the game ran smoothly for hours until I decided to quit. So I'm thinking, either the ram or the processor just isn't enough to run nvidia drivers with my normal game of 9GBs (almost 45,000 downloads), or something I've downloaded just f***s up the system (which makes no sense to me).
If anyone thinks the first option is totally ridiculous or irrelevant to the matter, please say so. If this can be fixed by buying more RAM than getting rid of my downloads, I'm prepared to go forward. By the way, here are my specs:

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600)
Processor: Intel (R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40 Ghz
Memory: 1022 MB RAM
Page File: 270MB Used, 2654 MB Available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Motherboard: ASUS P4V8X-X
Hard Disk: Maxtor (80GB) + Western Digital (80 GB) = 160GB total

==Display==

Name: NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip Type: GeForce 6600 GT
Approx. Total Memory: 128 MB

Main Driver: nv4_disp.dll
Version: 6.14.0010.8421(English)

Power Unit: 450W

Well I've tried 67.03, 81.98, 77.72 and the original one that came on cd with the card, all of them cause similar problems. the "not digitally signed" seems to worry me, like it's more of a windows compatibility issue. I get so many problems since I got the 6600GT, blue screen, f***ed up images in game, shakey images (also known as the infinite loop) or the computer restarts itself, totally out of control. But the OFB has made stuff worse, I'm thinking of a full format, I don't know how else to fix this, I don't remember what other driver I could have installed to make this happen. I hate having to  grit my teeth every time I exit a lot or try to enter one, which causes most of these problems. Off to try the 78.01. (By the way, the problems stopped for a while because when they happened in game, I lowered the refresh rate or if it was low, I raised it. Now I know that's not a reasonable fix ) 

Hee hee! (I really love those commercials too)
Story of my life: Your computer is fairly new (but bought before sims2 came out), you get nothing out of the game, decide to buy a new graphics card, realise you need more ram too, discover you don't have a good power supply, look for a new one, secretly know you'd be better off with a new cpu, but the motherboard has been replaced by a stupid repair company recently, so can't afford a new one yet, so go with a little ram, a card which fixes a lot of stuff, but causes more problems than before, and a supposedly good power supply which breaks down every 2 months, a generator.... Heck, what I do to play a computer game!

Oh my god it worked! And it wasn't that hard after all, thank you so much Simsbaby

I have this exact problem over and over again (6600GT), I tried like 4 drivers to fix it, the latest one causes more problems, believe me. Now I'm using the oldest drivers that came with the card's installer. The problems have decreased by a great number. I'm still going to try the 78.01 and the one on the page simlover linked to, maybe I'll get rid of this problem once and for all. I hate nvidia. (I also heard there was a compatibility issue with nvidia-geforce graphics cards and asus mainboards, could be wrong though) I hate computer problems too, and strangely, my old pc was messed up when I had thesims1, now it's getting more messed up as new expansions are added, hmmmm...

Okay, I'm basically simpe illeterate (and English isn't my first language, so forgive me for spelling too) but I had a young adult sim and had recently relocated the dorm ith him in it in another neighborhood. (I also know that screws up the neighborhood, but it's just one sim) But, as my stupid computer decided to give me another graphics error and crashed to dos before I was able to save the neighborhood in any normal way, the dorm doesn't exist in the lot bin, in the previous neighborhood, or in the new one.

This was my favorite sim, and I have a pre-OFB backup of the neighborhood, any way to get that sim back? I'm willing to recreate him, but I need the exact facial structure, personality etc. I remember vaguely about an export-import thingie in simpe, but I don't know if it will work since I have installed OFB now, and I don't want to uninstall & reinstall the game for a looong time.

Please I'd like some detailed help. No pictures needed just a detailed explanation as to find what where. (My simpe knowledge: I've edited sims before, edited object descriptions and scanned folders and checked poly counts, that's about all )

Thank you, I hope there's a way to fix this...

I'd like to know this too, does ringing 1 sim up make you a pro, or is it like 25 now

I agree 100 percent. But I did actually buy a better graphics card and more ram just for the game (don't tell my dad, he still thinks it wasn't enough for my work purposes!) But I did spend a whole 20-hours in total weeding through my custom downloaded clothing for all ages and categories, and dropped the number from about 6000 to about 3700. That was a nightmare, but I must say, before I did that, I only looked at the first 10 pages (at most) of clothing when creating a sim. Now I can look at all the clothes really fast and can't decide because I have only my favorites left. So I use a lot of the clothing on my ugly NPCs and townies, with a complete makeover. Now I only download the clothing I really like.
I guess this is because I love buying stuff for everyone else in real life, but I'm too stingy to buy anything for myself, I know fabric prices and I can design and sew my own clothes, so I always think I'll make that myself for 1/5 of the price, but am too lazy to do it, actually. And I can get ideas for new stuff for me- which I'll probably never make.

Yes, I know but I check each and every one in simpe as I download for poly counts and check file sizes, so I would be in a much worse state if I didn't. THAT's why I don't have any of Dincer's stuff, although I'd love to. For one high poly Dincer-made  bed (in game) I can probably put in a house 10 low poly beds in equal quality due to low poly meshing and high quality texturing. but I don't put in 10 beds, so my game runs faster.

Call me crazy, but I'm happy with this. A few years back my computer was very outdated and just playing The sims 1 with all EP's and a gazillion downloads- the game loaded in 4 hours! I started it before I went to bed then played in the mornings until it crashed! I'm happy to say my sense of control has developed greatly in the downloading area in the past 3 years. And any game loading time under 10 minutes amazes me!

I just got to this thread and I must be a target for balls of fire. I have a 7.89 GB Downloads folder, and the game takes half an hour to load, it's much faster since I added RAM, before it was an hour. So I get pretty frustrated if something goes wrong and crashes mid-game Most of the time I do housework or make dinner when I'm waiting for the danged thing to load. Lot-loading is also faster than before, about 2minutes and I don't hog up my community lots with lots of objects, so the slowing is down to a more tolerable state during gameplay downtown

 I think the major slowing down is from the 30,000 recolors I've downloaded since day 1 of bodyshop (before the game came out). Or the 5000 new mesh items. I'm going to sort it all out while I'm waiting for Business EP to come to my country, and a very good thing, seeing I'll probably have to wait for Pescado's hacks to be updated for the EP, which I wouldn't play the game at all without. So the cleaning up will keep me sane as my anticipation rises for the game, and will make more space for new EP-related downloads

I'm hopeless.

I know, but my adult sims just roll the ball 2-3 times and stop, I have to make them do it again. Same goes in the downtown area, but I think it's when somebody tries to join the game and changes his/her mind.

 And I got one of my kids to the highest body point in 2 days of nearly nonstop play before his birthday, but he was still fat when he grew up, does it just add body points and not affect the body shape because he's a child?