Thank you, Witch.

I've tried searching the forum and scrolling through pages of this thread without finding what I need.

How do I install Riverview without using the launcher?  I have downloaded the Riverview file from here but can't find instructions on how to install.

As far as I know you can't transfer registry files from one OS to another.   Do you have both installed on the same machine?  The speed would be determined by your CPU.   If it's a new machine you should just install the game on it the normal way.

No error messages of any sort when saving the game or when it crashes. The majority of crashes occurred when I clicked on a sim or something in the house and the game just disappeared.

Yesterday I played for about eight hours and had three crashes, all when trying to load a different save. (Same three saves that wouldn't load the night before.)  I set a timer and saved every 15 minutes or so but had no crashes during paly. I exited the game a couple of other times, deleted cache filies each time and re-entered to make sure my most recent save worked. I put back in the game the saves of previous games that I had removed and tested all those and had no difficulty with any of them.  So I apparently only have three saves that are so corrupted that they can't load. I wish I could figure out what I did to mess them up so I wouldn't do it again. All three were saved after I split up a family in Edit Town and moved half of them into a different house.  The save I had backed up before that move loads fine though I didn't try playing it yesterday.

As far as the hairs being the cause of crashing wouldn't it be more consistent?  I was having the crashing during game play for a week before I ever added the hairs.  I played for a couple of days with no crashes after I did add the hair.  I don't think any of them are high poly.  I like short, neat hair so none of them have a lot of sprigs sticking out or much overall mass.

No, I hadn't gotten to the point of using ANY mods.  I wanted to see what the vanilla game was like before modding it.

I am simply trying to find out if there is any way to prevent of fix corrupted game saves. 

I have no intention of sending hate mail to anyone.

I just got the game (purchased) this month and started having problems with crashing as soon as I started patching.  I have tried deleting cache files, monitoring temp, and reinstalling.  Computer specs are well above minimums.  Problem started before adding any CC and no mods.  I patched up to 1.7 with each patch making crashing worse.

After reinstalling I patched to 1.3 only  and added a few hairs plus nomosaic.  Played fine for a while then started crashing again.   Removed saved games and started a new one. Played fine for two days then crashed again.  And this time the saves won't even load.  A save I had backed up to desktop will load and I can start a new game and that save will load  but others drop to desktop. 

Something appears to be corrupting saved games.  Is there anything I can do to stop this occurring or to repair the corrupted games?    I found the decrapify thread but it doesn't really seem to apply to such a vanilla game.

I love Jm's local walkby hack. having the next door neighbors walking by is much more sensible than people from the other side of town. Or further.

I have looked in vain for a hack thaat does the same thing for the schoolbus. My sim kids are constantly wanting to bring home kids from other subhoods. In my part of the world communities have multiple elementary and even high schoools. Kids go to the one in thier neighborhood. I'd really like to have that same setup for my sims. I;ve also noticed that it is always the same two or three kids that they want to bring home with them. If three children are in the family they are likely to all want to bring the same kid home with them. (I use TwoJeffs schoolbus hack to deny permission to bring out of subhood kids home buthey still all ask for th esame kid.)

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Cheaty?   Who in the world does it cheat?   I am not playing in any kind of competition so can not possibly be cheating anyone.   

It could be said that using any kind of hack at all is 'cheaty', since it changes something that the game was designed to do.  Whether said design was sensible or not. However I use innumberalbe hacks,  most of them from here, to make the game do what I want it to as much as is possible. 

I don't object to my apartment neighbors standing on the porch building up their relationships with each other since they are all playable sims.  (I have no social group townies in my apartments.)  I just object to them entering the currently-being-played apartment as if it were their own.  As far as I can tell the only way apthack can accomplish this is by keeping them in their apartments all the time which is not what I want. I was trying to find out if any of the several door settings could accomplish this. 

What function does 'disallow lot visitors/allow lot visitors' on the door supposed to do? It doesn't keep off lot visitors from coming onto the lot so what does it do?

in order to keep apartment neighbors from walking in while still allowing invited sims to enter?  That includes invited visitors from off the lot?   I'm hoping there is some way to set it that is better than what I've been doing. 

My sims calls a friend or relative to come visit.  They show up and knock on door.  Sim goes out to greet them and goes back inside.  Visitor stays outside until door is unlocked and sim calls him inside. Sometimes I have to make them selectable to get them in.  Meanwhile half the apartment neighbors standing on the porch invite themselves inside to eat, watch TV or go to the bathroom.

 (No, I don't have apthack installed as my sims can't afford the extra deposit, even though the only furniture inside is kitchen cabinets and appliances and bath fixtures)

Also you can use a hack like Insimenator and possibly others to change the appearance of Maxis sims in game.  With InSim the hourglass temporal controller has a makeover feature that you can use to either change their appearance like a mirror or give them plastic surgery. Only thing you can't change is eye color.

You might not need five members of each social group unless you plan to have all five levels of apartments.  In my four year old neighborhood I have five social townies total none of which ever get inside an apartment.  I make all my apartments to have only four units, which I immediately populate with playable sims.  I move one family in, click on the apartment and exit back to neighborhood even before the agreement is signed.  Then next family is moved in, etc until all units are rented.  I currently have three apartment buildings, one in the main hood and one in each of two subhoods.  Notownieregen kept others from spawning.  I play with no townies at all and use TwoJeffs visitor controller to set all my lots to not allow townies to appear.

Well, since it's built into the game it's not really cheating to make a profit on something you buy for a purpose then resell.  But to do it over and over and over solely for the purpose of making money I think that would be as much cheating as using motherlode. 

Some of the perks of the secondary aspirations can bring in substantial cash also.   One of my sims has fortune as a secondary and has accrued several thousand simoleons through his investments in the stock market without having to even play it.  Every afternoon a notice pops up saying what he's gotten or lost.  Usually only a couple of hundred but there was a big jump in the household cash one day although I didn't see the popup itself before it disappeared.

I haven't done any object meshing so really have no clue as to how to go about it.   It would seem like cloning a Maxis bathtub from the game after Pets was installed and importing the meshes and textures into it would be the way to do it but I have no idea how to go about that.

Did you try getting in touch with the original creator to see if they had updated it? 

Or you could try asking the modders at MTS2.  There seem to be a lot more object creators over there than here.

I do have all the empty templates and they were installed before loading my custom neighborhood.  The particular hood that I am currently playing has no downtown and no community lots other than the cemetaries.  No bars at the cemetaries.  One other bartender was spawned

No witches have been spawned though I do find a witch cat and a spectral assistant in Simpe.  They apparently are not in the template neighborhood.  I do not have any of the Seasons npcs.  No garden club.  I do have the hobby people and in one of the apartments they were actually showing up and walking into the apartments instead of calling with their messages.

Why were 15 new strays spawned with AL?  The old ones were not all adopted though never see them anymore.

I can see that buying and selling the same object over and over could give you a lot of unearned money but don't see why anyone would bother.  Much quicker just to motherlode if you want to cheat. 

I haven't had AL very long and my sims are not into networking but I've had several instances lately when I was playing when I would hear the money 'kaching' and note that my sims had more money than I thought they had before.  One instance in particular I know they had only a few hundred simoleons when I entered the lot but heard the ching and they had over 3000.  No clue what it was. They were engaged in ordinary in home activities.  I consider it to be an unexpected windfall from an investment. 

What exactly are you wanting to do to it?     Are you trying to update a custom bathtub so you can wash pets in it? 

After installing I played a few sessions in Maxis neighborhoods with no downloads, then made sure all my hacks were updated before adding downloads back and installing my custom neighborhoods. 

Among the hacks I made sure I had antiredundency, no townie respawn and nostrayrespawn. 

First play session in custom neighborhood I created a four unit apartment builiding and immediately moved in four playable families. Only new person seen was the landlord.  However when checking character folder at end of session there were 22 new character files. Simpe revealed in addition to landlord there were five townies, one bartender (I have never hired a bartender in this neighborhood) and fifteen new strays.  Several play sessions and several playable sim births later I noted that two more strays and two more townies had been created. 

More game play passes and I take a sim to a community lot to film his death (faked, later died on home lot)   Later I noted an Unsavory Charlatan was spawned.  (Have no vacation subhood attached to this neighborhood.)

None of the no spawning hacks seem to be working the way they have in the past.  Yes, I am sure they are the latest ones. I have redownloaded them twice.

Another much BIGGER problem.   When attempting to scroll around the neighborhood or in any lot the cursor seems to have springs attached. I attempt to move forward, the cursor jerks back to where I started,  or springs further than I wanted it to, or jerks randomly to one side or another.  Has become very difficult to move around the lot for viewing. No problem with scroll wheel, only with right button scrolling. 

There have been other issues that I have been able to find answers to by searching.   

The good news is my wolves are back.  They stopped appearing on all lots in all neighborhoods after installing Freetime, whether with custom content enabled or totally removed from game.  My previous post asking if this was a bug of the unpatched Freetime never yielded an answer but whatever caused it has been fixed by installing AL.  Wonder if installing M&G would fix current problems.  Can't install patch as too big to download on dialup.

Mainly I was wanting to know if this is a good card for Sims 2.   I have heard a lot of people complain about problems with Nvidia cards in almost all series.   

The card I have, though old, is problem free up to now, even though texture is blurry and a lot of lag on big lots.   I don't want to change to something that works less well.

Anyone have this card and it works great?  Or have had it and it sucked?

What I have wound up doing is going into a lot, taking pics of all custom content, using the change tool to see where in the array of recolors a particular item is located.  I have found that to be closely related to where the item is in the download folder. I have various subfolders of downloads copied to desktop.  That was I can use CleanInstaller to view them even when I am in game.

This process is forcing me to organize my downloads even further. I am now putting all recolors of an object in a folder of its own.  Like all quaint endtables,  all club sofas. Easy then to locate any recolor.  All items that I have used are then moved to an identical folder for that neighborhood. The process is also helping me to identify things that I will never use and delete them, or at least move them out of game for theme stuff that is totally out of place for my current hood. 

I have been given a new video card but documentation and instructinos were not included.  I need some info and assistance in installing.

The card is GeForce 7300 GT AGP DVI-TV DDR2 512Mb   I was told I had to connect it to the power supply and it also has a cable that I have no idea what it is to connect to.  It has three receptacles. One for the cable, one for the monitor (the 15 prong one?) and I have no idea what the 24+4 receptacle is for. 

My current system is Pentium 4 2800 GHZ with 1500 RAM and a GeForce Mx 420

Anyone out there have the 7300 card who can tell me what to expect from it?  Any problems?

For what it's worth, I have the GeForce MX 420 and run base game with all expansion packs.  I don't get great texture detail in close up but it's good enough on a small lot to make my upload pics acceptable.  Even on big lots sim detail is clear most of the time, just blurring on occasion. I play with shadows and reflections off and can't view cinematics.

I do have 1Gb of RAM but need more.  Sim movement is a bit jerky at times and if I want to change viewpoint I have to pause the game to do so.  But all in all it has been a great videocard. I frequently have considered upgrading but have not heard of a card that someone has not had problems with and I can't afford to buy one and then have it not work as well as what I already have.

I have had the card overheat in hot weather. At such times I take the side off and direct a table fan into the case.

If anyone can recommend a card that has worked for everyone I've love to hear of it.  My system is a Pentium 4 -2800 Ghz

LOL  Nope, no life.   I retired six years ago and since then the only life I have is lived through my sims. I leave them only grudgingly to do anything else.

With the kitchen CC,  the only things I used were a recolor of a Maxis countertop and a recolor of a Maxis stove.  I had several recolors of the countertop, plus two more of the stove and some for the cheap refrigerator in my downloads folder. All of those were included in the package file. 

If I remember correctly when TS2 first came out packaging a lot included only the custom content that was used in the lot.  With one of the later eps they started packaging ALL of the recolors of anything that was used in the lot.   That is what happened with my apartment.  But as I said I packaged that some time ago.  I am hoping that by AL it has reverted to the original method. If not, then packaging the lots may not work for identifying the custom content objects used. It would list the walls and floors but I can do that easily by entering the lot and using the eyedropper.  With object recolors that won't work.   

Sorry it's been taking me so long to respond to your posts.  I lost my internet access number and have been having difficulty finding another one that is not long distance. Disadvantage of living in a very rural area.

Marhis:  That is a great idea.  Thank you very much.


Exiled: The censustool sounds very useful.  I'm definitely trying it out next time I go in game.

   Eggjuice?   what in the world is that? 

Thank you, DrNerd.  Now why didn't I think of that?  I use Clean Installer regularly when downloading a new lot to check to see what CC I already have. 

Do you have to put the house in the bin?   I thought there was an option to package the lot when you click on it in the neighborhood.   I have about 75 houses with families to check. Once I get them inventoried this time I am going to update it every time I play the family from now on. Then I'm going to get rid of all the stuff I haven't used so I have room to add more new stuff.

But how accurate is Clean Installer with custom objects?   I just reinstalled an apartment that I designed a few eps back and noticed that it included a whole bunch of countertops plus extra stoves and fridges.  When I went inside the building in game I saw only one of the countertops and all stoves and fridges were Maxis. I remember when it started inlcuding all recolors but don't know if any later expansion has stopped that.

Thanks, Marhis, that never occurred to me.  I guess that would be with antiredundancy out?  Next time I play in that neighborhood I will zap a bunch of bars.  Does that work for cooks and barristas also?   I recall that one of my neighborhoods has several barristas when looked at in Simpe, but only  two show up on lots.