Yep... going to as soon as I can.

Problem solved.  I got to thinking about it, and realized I'd never re-installed the drivers for the graphics card after I did the system recovery.  *duh*  It got lost in the shuffle of everything else that had to be re-installed.  So I re-installed the drivers, and voila... no more flashing.  Geez.  If I ever do a recovery again, or when I decide to get rid of Vista and install XP, I'm going to make up a list of things that have to be re-installed afterwards before I do anything else.  I don't want to make the same stupid mistake again.

Oh well.  At least my d/l folder doesn't have a bunch of useless crap in it anymore, and I took the opportunity to better organize things in there... so something good came out of it, at least.

Sorry to have wasted everyone's time.

Yes, I know I need more RAM.  I'm going to upgrade it as soon as I can.  I'd have done it already, but I couldn't do both a graphics card and RAM at the same time, and the GC was needed to properly run S2 and other games, so it won out.

As for Vista... with all the hell I've gone through with it, it looks to have a short life on this computer.  I don't give a damn if I did sign an agreement to keep it on the computer until I finished making payments.  It's a shitty OS.  XP is much, much better.

Quinctia: I have not played it sans hacks since the recovery... I copied my previous Downloads folder from the backup disk back into the new one after re-installing the game.  Made sure I had all the updated versions of Maty hacks and ran the game.  But, before I did the recovery, and before I had FFS installed, the game ran perfectly.  No flashing UCP, no crashes, nothing... I would play for hours with no problems at all... even with just one gig of RAM. 

I bought a the Celebrations stuff pack today, and installed it.  Before I try to play, I'm going to go through my downloads folder again, remove all the hacks and see what happens.  I think I left the StuffIt pack stuff in there that I'd downloaded before I had FFS and GL and (now) Celebrations installed, so I need to get all of that out of there, too.  Probably isn't the source of this problem, but it doesn't need to be in there, either.

Will post again after I've got all that done, and let you all know what happened.

When I play the game, the UCP flashes... sometimes just a couple of times before stopping, other times it will go on for quite a while.  It hasn't caused a crash so far, or prevented me from playing, but I know it's something that shouldn't be happening.

A few (hopefully) relevant details:

Uni, NL, FFS, and GL are installed.

Patches for NL and FFS are installed.

All were installed fresh after doing a system recovery on my computer last week and I didn't actually play the game until today.  Ran it briefly the first time... saw the flashing UCP, and exited out to see if I could figure out the cause.  I ran HCDU, removed conflicting hack files, then started the game again, but it was still flashing so it didn't appear to help in regards to the problem.

The hacks I have installed are all either for NL+, or specifically for NL.  (Wondering if NL specific hacks are at least part of the problem.  Does having GL mean I should have chosen OFB specific hacks instead?  I ask because the config log in my Sims 2 folder says my game is "The Sims 2, EP 3".)

OS:  Windows Vista Home Premium (ugh!)
RAM:  1024
HD: 160 GB
Processor:  Intel Celeron 430
Graphics card:  ATI Radeon X1300
Antivirus program:  Avast, which is disabled during game play.

I wasn't sure if I needed to get an error log or not before posting about this, so I decided to wait and see if one was requested first.  So... any ideas on what could be causing this flashing thing to happen?   

I still need to figure out what parts I can safely remove from the hair files.  I have several hairs that are all ages, and most of them look pretty darn silly on toddlers/children.  And the repeat toddler files are present in some as well.  I'm going to re-read the tut's, pick a guinea pig file, and see if I can manage to remove the right stuff.

I haven't used the plug-in yet.  The instructions confuse me a little.  I guess I'll just have to dive in headfirst and see if I can figure it out as I use it.  If not, no big deal.  Manual binning will work just fine for me!

I guess I'm picky, too, because I spent some time re-binning hairs to go where *I* thought they should go.  My idea of what should be binned as brown and blonde shades are a little different from some of the creators out there.     But bless them for binning it at all! 

I've just spent the last six hours properly binning all the hairs in my game.  I swear it just about made me go cross-eyed in the process.  Shit.  But it is nice to see everything where it should be, instead of lumped together in the custom bin.  I wish I'd taken the time to figure out how to do it a long time ago now that I know how easy it is to do.

Which begs the question... why are there still so many unbinned hairs being put up out there?     It doesn't take that long to do it for a handful of recolors!  Ugh...

Good grief.  That makes perfect sense, but it never occurred to me.  Now that I think about it, I'd always done the wedding party in the past... it wasn't until these last three that  I skipped it.  The more I read here, the more I find out about things I didn't know about this game...

I think it was a case of "convenient amnesia".  Jordan didn't want to show that he remembered it, cause he's a horny devil, and wanted all the woohoo he could get that night!

All kidding aside... updating the mod worked like a charm.  No more jumping, and the appropriate memories are where they should be.  Whew!  Good thing too, cause I was getting a little tired of seeing that cinematic.   

Off to update that now. 

I'm having issues with a Sim not gaining a "had first woohoo" memory, and the woohoo in bed want is being unfulfilled, as well.  Here's the story:

I downloaded a Sim (Jordan) with the intent to marry him off to Brandi Broke.  Got them engaged while playing Brandi, then switched over to his house, invited her over, and got them married under the wedding arch over there.  No wedding party, but as I had just moved Jordan into this house, 3 Sims showed up right before the wedding to welcome him to the neighborhood, and ended up being accidental guests to the wedding.

The limo never showed up to take them off on a honeymoon... third time this has happened in Pleasantview so far, but I wasn't concerned enough to try to figure it out.  I had them say goodbye to the guests, sent the kids to bed, then had Brandi & Jordan go to their bed.  Relax, cuddle, woohoo.  As soon as the cinematic ended, they jumped out of bed.  Brandi's woohoo want was taken care of, and she had the appropriate memories, but Jordan's want was still there, and he had no memories of it.

I had them go through the process 3 more times (unlocking Jordan's woohoo in bed want first, if that matters).  Same thing happened each time.

I started the game up a little while ago and did the "boolprop testingCheatsEnabled true" thing, ran them through the motions again, and was notified of the error that occurred.  The error log is attached below.  (I also saw an XLS file named OETreeDelete that was created at the same time as the error log... not sure what that is, or if it is something that should be attached, so I didn't upload that one.)

On a side note, should I be concerned that I wasn't able to cancel the error out?  My mouse pointer completely disappeared, and I ended up having to use task manager to get out of the game.  I'm a little concerned, as I've read that you need to turn off debug mode once you've finished with it.  Am I correct in assuming it will still be turned on the next time I start up the game?  This is my first time using this, so I'm not sure if that's a correct assumption or not.   

I have the base game, Uni, and NL.  A few hacked objects - Merola's multi painting, InSim, and Monique's computer (V9.0) are the main ones I use on lots.  A handful of mods from here as well as some from Squinge.  I can make up a list of installed mods, if it's needed.

Hopefully I've given enough info... if not, my apologies, and please let me know what I've forgotten to mention.  I'm so frustrated right now, I'm about ready to uninstall and start from scratch again... *sigh*

It's an interview, no music.

That was my original suggestion to her, when I helped her figure out how to go about saving it as an mp3.  The lowest setting on her WMP was 128 Kbps, and she didn't seem too keen on downloading Real Player.  I'm still trying to talk her into doing that.  It would be a lot less trouble for her to just do that, in the end.  Not to mention, it would be a quicker download for everyone if the size got whacked pretty good.

Oh, that's right, it does!  I remember seeing that option earlier when I was looking at it, now that you mentioned it.  I'll pass that on to her.   

*presses thanks button a few times for good measure*

(Slightly OT)

You know, I was wary of using winrar at first, because I typically hate all unknown programs.  But once I figured out how much easier it was to use compared to winzip, I wished I'd heard of it long ago.  It's SO much easier and less time consuming.  Winzip is tedious when you have multiple files to open up.

I'm sorry, I didn't notice I never said what type of file it was... crap!  (Serves me right for staying up all night simming.  Sheesh)  She's trying to compress a 15 minute mp3 into a send-able size. 

I'll ask her if she's able to split it up into smaller parts... not sure if she has the means to do it or not, but that would be a good solution to the problem.

If not, I'll point her towards megaupload or something similar.   

I appreciate the help!

A friend of mine is having problems with file compression, so I thought I'd tell you all the situation and see if someone can help me out with it.  Lord knows that people in the Sims community have become masters at crunching down big files!   

So here's the situation:  She's got a file that approximately 19 MB, and would like to compress it as much as possible so she can either email it to some friends, or upload it to a yahoo group we're all on.  Yahoo has a 5mb limit (as I'm sure most of you know).

I've downloaded many things for my game where the zip knocked down to a 1/3 of it's original size... so I know there's some way to super compress them.  Problem is, I can't figure out how to do it.  The most I've ever knocked one down is maybe a meg, if I was lucky.

Can someone tell me (in very easy terms) how to do some serious compressing on file size?  I was planning to RTFM (again) for both winzip/rar after I got some sleep, but I figured it might be a good idea to ask those who have mastered the process as well. 

I'd appreciate any pointers... this thing is driving me and my friend up the damn wall!

*presses thanks button repeatedly*

SaraMK, you rock!     I'm so glad I asked now... I almost didn't cause I thought it was a dumb question.  LOL

Is there a way to use clothing that requires an EP that you don't have?  What I mean is, has anyone ever extracted the needed meshes from the game, and made them available for download for those who don't have a certain EP?

I don't know if such a thing can even be done, or if anyone would have bothered with it if it is possible to do.  I was just curious, and thought I'd ask.   

Alrighty, I won't worry about it then.    Like I said, all I cared about was being able to play those hoods...as long as it enables me to do that, I'm a happy camper!

I just downloaded Dea's fixes.  I don't mind that it won't remove townies/NPCs, but I was curious about what, exactly, is left unfixed in her version as compared to yours?

As long as the fixes enable me to try out those hoods, I'll be happy.     I've read so much about how screwy Strangetown and Veronaville are that it's scared me away from playing them... it would be nice to be able to make use of them finally.

What is "firstborn syndrome"?  I've never come across that phrase before.

I just saw there were new responses to this... hadn't had time to check it in a while.  I guess I should have come back to say I was no longer having this problem.  I removed the College Assignment Fun hack and that did the trick.  (I ended up removing Inteen as well.  I decided I didn't care to have it in my game after all, since I never used it.)

The pop up I mentioned... that came when I tried to install the Uni patch I downloaded.  (I'd had the Uni ep installed for a week or so before I finally got around to getting the patch for it.)  I just thought it was odd to get the "already up to date" message the instant I double clicked on the patch, and wondered if buying that ep so long after it's original release date had anything to do with that.  Not sure why I never fleshed that thought out in my original post... but that was the point behind that bit. 

Thanks for the info Jordi!  I'll remove the unneeded fix and drop one of the two incompatible files.  I think I'll remove College Assignment Fun for now... I haven't been playing the college stuff that much anyway.

I'll have to read all the info files that came with Inteen again.  I don't know if it includes the transition fixes or not, but something about that is ringing a bell for me... I'll check it out after I get some sleep.  (Been up all night here... LOL)

Re: the error log... where would I find it?  I found a folder named Logs within the EA/Sims 2 folder in My Docs, but it has a lot of different log files in it (most empty, but some aren't).  Which one should I be looking in, cause none of it makes any sense to me after looking at it.   

Oops!  Inteen isn't conflicting with itself.  I read it wrong.  It may be conflicting with the Teen Keeps Loves mods, unless I'm reading this wrong, too.  LOL  It says:

*** POSSIBLE CONFLICT DETECTED ***
File Type: BHAV
Procedure Name: Transition Relationships - Teen to Adult
Group ID: 0x7F07FBBC
Instance ID: 0x00001022
Packages Containing This Procedure:
\downloads\Game Mods\InTeenimater_B.package
\downloads\Game Mods\MOD_Age Transition Fixes - Teens Keep Loves.package
 
*** POSSIBLE CONFLICT DETECTED ***
File Type: TTAs
Group ID: 0x7FAB1298
Instance ID: 0x00000001
Packages Containing This Menu Strings File:
\downloads\Game Mods\InTeenimater_B.package
\downloads\Game Mods\InTeenimater_B.package