DISCLAIMER:

Before anyone has to point it out, yes, I'm aware I'm a total dweeb.  Have mercy on me.

******

HERE'S MY DWEEB PROBLEM:

In the middle of creating a requested custom career, my computer hard drive crashed. Hard. And according to my computer geek techhie repair guy, it took my mother board with it.

Now I'm back up and running with a replacement hard drive and mother board, but the "co-owner" of my computer (my husband) has threatened great marital discord if I install any Sims games on the repaired computer.    I do have access to SimPE, and the custom career file (which I was smart enough to save on a USB drive), and I have managed to complete the entire career with the exception of the Teen/ Elder uniform. I want to use the same uniform as the Teen/ Elder Architecture career, but without installing the Base Game and Free Time, I have no other way of getting the GUID for that uniform.

I guess I could risk an episode of Divorce Court, and install the Base Game and Free Time, just to grab the GUID I need, then uninstall them, but... I'm not sure I want to go through all that just for one simple little GUID.

Is there anyone who would be willing to grab the GUID for me, or can point me to somewhere I can look it up?? I've been all over the web and can't seem to find it posted anywhere.

Thanks a whole heap, in advance!!

Is there no limit to the depths to which they will sink?
http://forums.sims-community.com/showthread.php?t=66708

Furthermore, any and all messages regarding this issue on the BBS are being actively locked and removed by Maxoid_Hydra, with the excuse that posts should be kept 'on-topic', and only related to the game or the Sims2.com website.   

I added my 2 cents to the BBS, and suggested that everyone who is angered by this run out and grab ANY and ALL TSR content from PMBD, just to annoy TSR.  Of course, my post was removed immediately.

Ah well, we all know who's Awesome and who isn't.  But I would suggest that anyone who reads this and has any link or account with TSR take any necessary action to protect their personal information ASAP.

I've kind of bypassed that restriction before, when I wanted a wedding party on a Community lot.  Go into the Community lot beforehand (in BUILD mode) and add a residential telephone somewhere.  Then save and exit the lot.  Take your Sims to the Community lot.  Once they're on the lot, change the lot zoning to Residential.  Then use the residential phone to Throw Party.  After the party, change the lot zoning back to Community and send your Sims home.

My bad, it did turn out to be a CEP issue.  I found and installed the updated version, and now my colors are back.

Pardon my blondeness.

Forgive me if this seems a petty little thing, but it's annoying the hell out of me!

Is there anything out there that will give me back the extra colors of the Ergo door and window that AL stole from my Build Mode catalog?  I use those build items a LOT, but usually in white.  Red...  not so much!  Or should I just bite the bullet and recolor them myself?

I had this same problem with one of my own custom-created vacation neighborhoods.  It swallowed my very favorite Sim and I couldn't get her back.  Being a noob and an Asinine Airhead, I didn't know any better than to follow the same advice from the BBS.  I deleted my whole vacation 'hood, and lost HOURS of work I had spent setting it up.  But my Sim did appear back at her home lot in the base neighborhood, so I thought it was fixed.

However, when I tried it again I could suddenly enter the lot just fine, but the BV locals started duplicating themselves every day, even though I had installed the BV patch AND the Anti-redundancy Hack.  Then at the end of the vacation, the shuttle didn't show up to take the Sim home.  I waited a full three Sim days past the end of the vacation, no shuttle.  I finally discovered I could have the Sim call for the shuttle, so I tried that.  And it still didn't come.  I ended up deleting the vacation neighborhood again, just to get my Sim home.

And then, of course, my neighborhood was flooded with duplicate character files.

The ONLY way I finally solved the whole mess was to uninstall and re-install, then install the patch and Anti-redundancy Hack again.  Now it seems to be fixed.  But that's a pretty drastic step.  I hope, for your sake, there's another way.   

Yikes!  Good to know.  Thanks.     Crumpling up InTEEN & tossing it in Recyc as we speak.

Tight pants.  Got it.  I went through pretty much all the hacks I have and downloaded the new A.L.-updated versions, but must have missed InTEEN.  Thanks!

I usually play with aging off, just 'cuz I don't like dealing with elders.  I found it a royal pain in my posterior to turn it on for kids' age transitions, and then back off again, so I found an anti-aging hack which stops aging for adults and elders, but allows it for all other groups.  But now I've started a Legacy challenge, and I really need my adults to age and my elders to DIE, so I disabled my anti-aging hack.  My Legacy founder graduated college and aged to adult just fine, but now that I've put him in his own house, he's not aging.  At all.  It says he has 29 days before he turns into an elder, and I know it's only supposed to be 28 to begin with.  I double-checked to make sure my anti-aging hack was disabled, and I entered the 'aging on' cheat, just to make sure aging was turned on for that lot.  Still not aging.

I have InTEEN, but I don't really think that's causing the problem.  Before I get lectured for using hacks in my Legacy, I'm NOT using any cheats or hacks for the Legacy family; I have them installed for use with other families in that neighborhood.

I've heard from other Simmers that they've had problems with aging since installing A.L., so it's rumored to be an A.L. issue.  Does anyone know of any way to fix it?  I reeeeaaaaally need my Legacy founder to age!

Thanks for your, um, help.  I uninstalled my entire Sims2 configuration from my laptop and installed on my desktop, and it's working properly now on the desktop.

I've discovered my Bon Voyage is totally messed up.  I downloaded the patch, AND the Anti-Redundancy hack months ago, but when I tried to take my Sim on a mountain vacation, the following things happened:

1.  My Sim left home okay, but when she got to the vacation lot, it loaded in the Buy and Build mode.  Live Mode was grayed out, and my Sim was nowhere.  When I exited the lot and re-entered, same problem.  When I went back to the base neighborhood and tried to enter her home lot, it told me that she was visiting the vacation lot and wouldn't let me in.  The only way I could get her back was to delete the entire vacation neighborhood.  After the HOURS I spent designing it and setting it up!

2.  Deleting the neighborhood and starting from scratch put my Sim back into her own house, so I sent her on vacation again.  This time, for every single 'local' Sim my Sim met, the game suddenly spawned 3-4 copies of each.  I know, this is the redundancy bug.  But like I said, I've installed the patch and the hack, so it shouldn't be doing this!  (The hack couldn't be conflicting with the patch, could it?  To the point of cancelling it out?)

3.  At the end of her vacation, when the time bar said "Time to Go Home"  ...  nothing happened.  I kept expecting the shuttle to show up and take her home, but nothing.  She stayed an extra three days without the shuttle showing up!  The lot she was vacationing on was a remote campsite, built as a Vacation Home.  As such, there was no Community lot phone booth to use.  I hadn't given her a regular phone, either, all she had was her cell phone.  I finally discovered that I could click on her and choose Vacation-->End Vacation and Go Home, but when I clicked on that, she would make the call but still no shuttle.  And thus another day went by and she was still stranded at her remote campsite. I finally had to delete the vacation neighborhood AGAIN.  And now my base neighborhood is flooded with extra Sim files from the clones, and I don't dare try to send any of my Sims on vacation.  This really annoys me!  I have Bon Voyage because I wanted to USE it.  Now I don't know what to do with it.

Help??

Hmmm.....  never even heard of a no-cd patch, so I'm probably not using one.  ...  And I just hate when I improperly place my crack! 

First of all, let me just say that, despite working for a pretty intensive software company, I am a complete moron, bordering on imbecile, when it comes to computer stuff.  So please explain stuff to me as if I were a grandmother (which, by an odd coincidence, I am!), and maybe I'll catch on.  Thanks in advance for your help!

Like a complete fool, I actually did what EA said I should, and I installed the latest Bon Voyage patch.  Ever since then, every stinkin' time I try to load the game, the screen goes black and I hear the 'click' (that means my video card is doing what it's supposed to), but then the screen clicks back to my desktop and I get this error message:

Failed to find any DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapters in this system! Please make sure you have a DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapter and have installed the latest drivers provided by the manufacturer. The application will now terminate.

Since I am a relatively logical person, the first thing I did was get the latest version of DirectX, and installed the driver.  Then I downloaded and installed the driver for my ATI Radeon 9600 video card.  Still same problem.

Thinking my Bon Voyage disk may have crapped out, I installed Free Time.  Same problem.  So I uninstalled and reinstalled Bon Voyage, thinking that if the patch was causing the conflict, uninstalling Bon Voyage would remove the patch.  Same problem.

I've completely uninstalled my entire Sims2 configuration (ALL the EP's and ALL the SP's) and only reinstalled the base game.  Same problem.

That's when I got EA Customer Service involved.  On their advice, I've changed the Auto-run compatibility to Windows 2000.  I've copied the disk images to my hard drive, changed the DirectX line in the Auto-run file from 9.0 c to 0, and installed from the hard drive.  I've done a complete uninstall and checked my registry keys, but there were no files corresponding to the filenames they gave me to check for.  I've made sure I'm trying to run the game from an Administrator profile in Windows.  Still same problem.

Their latest suggestion is to do another complete uninstall and create a new Administrator account, then try again.  I really have no faith that this will work, and I am going to go postal very soon and wipe out some poor innocent Customer Care center in India if I can't play this game on my computer soon!  Is there anyone here with any other ideas??