Thank you both for your quick responses.  This tells me I need to check postys more often.

So, does Theo's simsurgery work with FT?  Mine keeps crashing, even with no CC in there and, as yet, no use of SimPE, so I'm leery of using anything with the game until I'm reasonably sure it'll work without adding buggly bits.  Figures my favorite ep (one that actually has things my sims will use) would be the one to crash without warning on me.

Yay, tutorials.  I read the FAQ here several times, so I guess I'll just have to traipse about and find other, more specific ones.  Perhaps I will even win at Google.   

Tootles,
Tika

I apologise if this repeats any other old posts.  The ones I found answered part of my questions but I'm still curious about other aspects.

Just what I've read (and what little I've understood) about SimPE convinces me that it is not awesome.  In fact, now I'm rather afraid to use the SimSurgery, although I'm not sure exactly why other than 'it puts junk files in the game and borks things.'  I'm going to take this as a positive first step in learning how to avoid blowing up my computer.

Theo's alternate SimSurgery seems interesting, but I rather want my sims to have the recessive genes.  Also, I'm not sure if it's compatible with FT.  JM said in another post that I could extract the LXNR from my source's original file and splice it over the LXNR of my target.  Would that allow the recessive genes?  How do I go about finding and extracting the LXNR?  Is this something that someone such as myself* can handle doing, or should I stick to SimPE and continue searching MATY for fixes to remove the garbage this puts into my game?

On a somewhat related note, is there a thread here (or a link anyone knows) that could give me the basics of hacking terminology?  Not anything so complex that I could learn to do these things myself - not yet, anyway - but just so I can understand a little of what's involved.  Part of my confusion comes from the fact that I don't understand half the words and letter strings you guys use. 

*hides in a cardboard box to avoid being pelted with rotten fruit and fish parts*

Thank you in advance,
Tika

*Myself has decent computer knowledge but no hacking skills whatsoever.  She knows enough to avoid causing the BFBVFS but not enough to keep from inflicting minor but increasingly annoying borks in her Sims2 game.

Aye, redundant NPCs, townies, pets.  Often with the same name and outfit, though a different face.  It's incredibly irritating and slows the load time to a crawl.  I was hoping (before I came here and discovered how off-base I was) that if I found out their file name (N003_847 or something) and deleted them straight from the folder, it would make them be gone and stay gone.  Silly ferret, you broke your game again.

Slash and burn, eh?  Le sigh.  I was afraid of that.  Well, in that case...

*SMASHES WITH HAMMER*

Muahahahahahaha-ack-choke-gah!

Hrm.  Methinks I've lost me mind.  Again.

Thanks for the quick response!  Tis much appreciated.

Tootle pip and all that rot,
Tika

So... what I gather from reading all these pages is that I am, in fact, quite screwed.  After installing BV, I wiped out everything that I had (yay, bugs!) and started over.  I was set.  I had a plan.  I'd saved the physical images of my peoples in BodyShop so I could place them back in the game without all the horrors inflicted on them by my noobish use of SimPE.  I was happy.

And instead of having 2-300 townies/NPCs/filthySTRAYS in my neighborhoods, I ended up with 900. 

When I realised that the game was making multiples of everything, I'd already restarted rebuilding my neighborhood.  <whine> I don't WANNA remake everyone again, grow them up, send them through college... </whine>

Ahem.  Any suggestions on how to speed up the process?  Or should I torch the game and start once more, armed with your lovely antiredundancy hack?

Or maybe just torch the game.

Thank you, in advance, from a thoroughly non-awesome ferret,
Tika

(Edited to make a stupid question slightly less stupid. Ish.)