I've recently installed Apartment Life. After the installation I noticed that there is a lot of problems with the features from BV.

First, my sims are unable to learn any local gestures since no locals do ANY gestures. All they do is normal greeting.
Actually, this one local miraculously came to my sim and did hangloose. But, when I tried to spread the gesture to other sims
it wasn't part of the options given in gesture queue. After that, I've never seen any locals doing gestures.

Second, my sim found two maps for secret lots but she is unable to go to any of those lots since when she calls for transportation or tries walk to community lots, they
don't show up in the destination options.

Third, after my sim explored the pirate ship and the ghost of pirate captain appeared there is no queue for joining the pirate chant. All I can choose is Entertain...Joke.
I'm not sure whether it's an actual bug since I haven't tried this before I installed Apartment Life; maybe I'm not doing it correctly...

Has anybody encountered similar problems? I have a few custom contents but I don't have any game mods... My sims are from the new neighborhood created in
Apartment Life (sorry I forgot its name...). Both sims were both created previously by EA.

In step 2, after I changed the directory to c:\windows\system32 using cd command and typed 'uaservice7/remove' I get a message saying 'uaservice7 is not recognized as an internal or external command, operatable program or batch file.' Did I do something wrong?

Thank you all for the suggestions.

First, yes. My drive is CD/DVD. But, I had no problem with all the previous ones. It's just these two latest ones that are driving me insane.
The thing is I already erased all my expansion packs, thinking maybe previous expansion packs were crashing with Freetime and IKEA.
(This method didn't work, either) So, no-cd crack wouldn't be helpful since the game isn't even installed in my laptop now.
I'll try removing SecuRom. I've never heard of it, but if it helps I'll try it. I've been thinking that there must be some kind of locking
system either in my computer or in those CDs. Maybe SecuRom is it. I asked EA people if there are any locks in the CDs, but they didn't really tell me anything.
Anyway, thank you all again for your help.

Hello? Could anyone help me with this problem?

I recently bought Freetime expansion pack. I installed and played the game for a while. Then, I exited the game.
So far, there weren't any problems.
When I tried to restart the game, my laptop started to make this clicking sound and was unable to read the CD.
If I click Freetime icon, it would say 'there is no disk in CD-rom.'
First, I thought there might be a problem with my CD drive. So, I tried running few of my previous expansion packs. They worked fine.
Then, I thought that the CD might have been scratched. So, I tried running Freetime with my sister's computer. It ran without any problems.
I was pretty sure my laptop meets all the system requirement since I did play Freetime for a while and was able to play all the other expansion packs without problems.
But, I checked anyway by running DirectX Diagnostic Tool. I met all the system requrements except that I had DirectX 10 instead of DirectX 9.
I don't know if that's problematic.

Then, today I got Sims IKEA as a gift.
I tried to install it, and now I have the same problem.
My laptop made some cliking noises and was unable to recognize the fact that there is a CD in the laptop.

It looks like the expansion/item packs that are newer than Bon Voyage don't seem to work.
I sent questions to EA people, but all they told me was to terminate background tasks and emply temp folder. I tried them and they didn't work.
I checked EA website and followed their instructions on updating driver. When I started installation, a message saying 'The driver being installed is not validated for this computer' popped up. I tried updating driver through Windows Update, and it said my driver is already upto date.

I'm so frustrated because even EA people don't seem to have answers for this problem.  Did anybody encounter similar problems?

OMG, Thank you. This is so helpful. I do have some old hacks that are not updated. I'll re-try the game after I update all my hacks... Thank you so much.

I just tried the game with Download folder removed and all my pets got promoted with no problem... Actually, I have never downloaded
hacks from this site... (I guess this means all my hacks are non-Awesome ones...)
When I restored Download folder, I removed some of my old hacks, assuming they could be the cause of this problem, but my pets were still
unable to get a promotion... Anyway, since it seems like a costum content is crashing with the game, I will keep playing with Download folder
until I find what is actually causing this problem...
Thanks for all the comments and advices.

Yes... The game is updated completely...

I've been playing Pets for some time... and so far my pets haven't got any promotions yet.
At first, I thought it's because I did not satisfy all the requirements for promotion. But, now I'm
suspecting that it could be a bug...

One of the pets I have is a cat. She knows all the commands except 'use toilet.' I wanted to do some
experiement to find out if this problem is a bug or not... so I made her go to work with perfect mood
everyday by using cheat ('maxmotives'). And still... she hasn't had any promotions! 
The same problem applies to all the pets that I have in different lots.
Does anyone experience the same problem? I couldn't find any related posts... I really
want to fix this. Does anybody know a cause of this problem, please???