I'm not exactly sure what you mean by simsurgery not being able to import a modified face. I also don't know what LXNR is, but what I meant was using the existing older sister (as she is) as the archetype, transfer her looks onto her sibling (when they're of the same age), and possibly edit the dominant facial features in the Sim DNA afterwards. But sure, plastic surgery would probably be simpler (including modified genetics) than this method.

But I thought it was safe to delete sims from the Sim Bin if they hadn't interacted with anyone or been put on a lot? Without any extra deleting of memories etc.

Anyway, another alternative would be to use the older sister as the archetype directly, and just modify the dominant face parts perhaps.

Or use Sim Surgery right away instead. That's what I'd do. Maybe export her older sister, tweak her features a bit in BS or CAS to not have an identical sim, and then use her as an archetype.

With or without the patch?

Here they are:



and the offspring:




Maybe. That's why I'm wondering if anyone have noticed this issue being resolved now; I don't trust Maxis, and I'm not 100 % sure this is the same problem as mine. If not, for me it's not worth it to install the patch.

Does anyone know if the dogs' ears work correctly now?  Pre-patch (still haven't installed it...), my dogs with hanging ears got puppies with upright ears and vice versa. Very irritating, my salukis looked like farao dogs. 

I hear you, but sometimes I get deep into wishful thinking. After some career hopping, it feels like none of my townies ever use their everyday clothes anymore and I'd very much enjoy having them dressed normally again. I have both uni and NL, but I felt nostaligic and wanted to play with just the base game for a while.

Of course not. They're superior beings, didn't you know? 

Thanks for the suggestions nonetheless!

I do neither, and all my cats are perfectly sane, according to themselves anyway,  so I guess we don't need your services after all. 


Thanks! But I've been a members for years already. Sad enough. 

It does, but it wasn't self evident which one it applied to.

Just to make sure before installing: the normal clothes one is for all versions, right? It's the clothing event thingy that is only for NL? I have just the base game installed at the moment.

Last time for me was back in 2000. Yep, researching sounds cooler, I agree.   


I'm sure I would. Or will, since I DO plan to come over. 


There's 5? I thought there were three. *trying to remember what sister said*
  You take patients? How many simoleons per hour do you charge? 


Motherboard and PSU, yes. Being without a computer proved to me once and for all my life isn't worth living without it. 

Sorry for the late response. Since I got the game to work, I've been pretty much simming non stop. I'm gonna start study again in a short while (it's been years since last time), so I better seize the opportunity while I have some time on my hands.

  I did wonder about the expressions. My theory was that you'd learned some because so many Swedish tourists come to Greece. So, you're born in Sweden/Stockholm by Greece parents, yeah? Stockholm is the city where I'm currently living, also in the suburb (Blackeberg/Bromma). I've almost moved to Ireland twice, but changed plans the last minute both times. As for Greece, all of my family except me has been there. I'm sure I will go some day too. I love to travel, when my starved wallet allows me. 

That triology is on my "to read" list. I'm almost ashamed I haven't read it yet. I used to be a real bookworm. My younger sister always talk about it. But I have some severe issues with "should'ves", it can cause me to procrastinate everything, even fun stuff. I probably should see a therapist about it, but obviously I never do. 

Oh, don't get me wrong, my parents really wanted me to get a working computer, no matter what, but they're both on disability pension and my stepdad has been ill for many years now, so most of their savings have been spent on medicine and whatnot. I've always been short of money, while my siblings are not, so some of them see it as very unfair that I've gotten more than my share, so to speak.

I really wish I had a friend with a computer I could borrow to test things at times like this, but I've moved to a new city and don't know anyone here yet. Well, I sort of do, but no one I've spoken to for a number of years, and it seems a bit rude to call them up after such a long time just to take advantage of them like that.   

Since I've been able to install it, and the game runs fine now, I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope this was just a one time thing. I've put the receits in a safe place just in case though, to have them handy if it happens again. If it does, I will go to the store and tell them to dra åt helvete. 

Edit: Somehow, after trying to install for the 101th time, I managed to complete the process, so now TS2 is running again. I haven't played much yet, but I'm gonna spend a few hours doing so today, and hopefully it won't crash anymore.

----------------------------------------

First of all, I wanna say thank you to everyone who's come with suggestions and taken the time to do their best to help me out with this.

Finally, after a week without a working computer, I have it back up and running again. Turned out to be hardware related, as I suspected. It gave up all together last Sunday, and I couldn't even start it anymore. Completely dead. I managed to borrow some money from my parents (partly borrowed, partly got an advance on my heritage...  ), and took it to a computer repair place. Turned out to be the motherboard, so I had to buy a new one that they installed for me. According to their tests, everything else was working. My harddrive, RAM sticks, CPU etc. But after the motherboard took it's last deep breath, there was a burnt smell, and they told me they couldn't figure out why. If I understood them correctly, only thing that could cause that was the PSU, but when they tested it, it was fine. I decided to go for a new one just in case anyway, as I didn't want to risk having to turn it back in if it happened again and pay yet another repair and installation fee, on top of the cost for the PSU itself. So I've got a brand new one now. I also got a DVD burner (sick and tired of having tons of CD ROMs with all my downloads) and a new copy of TS2 (the scratch on my disc1 transformed into a crack), but this time on DVD. The computer seems to be working ok now, although I haven't done much yet, other than formatting the harddrive, installing XP and making sure all the needed drivers are in place.

But... I can't install TS2. I've tried 10-15 times already, but it seems impossible at this point. Two times I got as far as 98 % done. What happens is that the installation process freezes, and the computer stops responding. I can't do anything when that happens, except turn it off. Not even ctrl+alt+delete works. I've made sure to follow the steps of manual uninstallation exactly (deleting registry entries from regedit etc) after each try, before installing again. I've tried to install from the harddrive, but wasn't able to. I've cleaned the disc and I've cleaned the DVD burner. Since both are brand new, I don't know which one's causing this. I wish I knew, so I could go back to the store where I bought it (whether it's the game or the DVD burner) and get a new one.

If anyone has any ideas how to solve this, I'd very much appreciate if you shared it. 

I took out one of the RAM sticks, and oddly enough, the computer works faster now, with only half the RAM... But... It still crashes. Or rather, it restarts. Not as often as before, but it happens. I also get error messages saying things have been restored after a critical error. I did before too, I think I forgot to mention that.  I'm gonna switch sticks tomorrow, and see if things are different then.

DrBeast - I'm connected to the internet with the same computer that crashes, yes.

angelyne - I haven't got the papers from when I bought the computer, unfortunately. I've moved to new cities two times since then, and I can't go back to the store I originally bought the parts from (and that put everything together for me). The papers got lost in the first move, I think. I was in a hospital and going through surgery at the time, so I had people helping me with packing and stuff.

On EA:s Swedish site there was a step by step instruction, but one file (at least) I couldn't copy, so it didn't work to install from the harddrive. When I don't play, I write, and usually I have Word, Excel, Explorer and Winamp all open at the same time while working on that. Should do the trick to test the RAM... 

Thanks for the tip, I've been thinking about doing that, but wasn't sure if I'd risk it. But what's life if you never take any chances, eh?  Gotta go take my fleece sweater off and try that!    I wonder if I can start the game with my broken CD if I install from the harddrive (since I reformatted, I don't longer have TS2 installed)... 
But you know,  it's not 500 kronor the technician would get, rather 390. 1 $ is worth just under 8 kronor now.  Still a small fortune for poor people like myself though.

Just in case anyone's interested (and because I feel like it ) : I went into town today and talked to some people in different computer stores. About 5 or 6 different places, I think. They all said that they suspect it's a bad RAM stick. Right now I'm debating with myself whether or not to pay $ 49 to get a technician to determine if that's what's wrong for sure, or to take a chance and buy a new stick myself. I'm leaning towards the first, although it probably means I won't have money for the stick itself for another month. I have two 512 sticks though, so even if it's the RAM, hopefully one of them is ok. As for the game, I do need a new disc. I feel awful about it, but I think I might do it anyway. It's a lot of money for a game I already have, but on the other hand, if I can't play, then the money I've already paid (for NL and uni too) is a waste, not to mention the subscription/donation downloads I've given in to over the past year. I've bookmarked a used copy on an online auction that I might bid on. The seller claims she's only installed it once so it's practically new. She's got good feedback, so perhaps this is an ok alternative. We'll see.

Hey, I'm just glad anyone's bothering with this thread. 

TACK! 

No strange noises, no. I've checked the PSU, and although I was a little confused about all the text on it, I wrote down what seemed to be what you meant. It says it's a Macron MPT-550. Under Input it says 230V-4.5A 50 Hz and under Outut it says 550 W MAX. I'm Swedish and we usually have 230V 50 Hz sockets here, if that makes any difference.

Yeah... I'm afraid of that. It's never fun to have to spend a lot of money on something that 's not working, but in my case, I really don't have it. I can afford one or perhaps two new components if I only eat pasta this month (and I will, if I have to), but more than that is just impossible. I have nothing else than food to cut back on right now. Especially since I bought this one only a year ago only to be able to play TS2. I had just got my parent's old one, that was better than mine, and although it worked like a charm for everything else it made playing TS2 a pain in the butt, so I convinced my folks to loan me the money for a new one. And I haven't completely paid them back yet either... I was so careful when deciding where to buy it and what to put in it, did a lot of research and asked around in every single store in my town. But since I have very limited knowledge about hardware, I had to trust the sales people what they said I should get and how things should be, and sometimes too little knowledge means you don't know what questions to ask. I was all caught up in video cards, CPUs and RAM as that was what made the game so hard to play on the other one. And I was on a very strict budget, which was why I had to keep everything possible from the old one, like network card, CD drives, floppy and everything external like screen, keyboard, speakers etc. 

I'm not sure what you mean by sound funny, DrBeast. My computer has always been very loud, but I'm guessing that isn't the harddrive. Before my dad's harddrive got fried, he said it made strange chopping noises. Is that what you mean? The scandisk doesn't come up with anything. That's a bit strange if it's the harddrive, huh? My power supply unit is a year old. I bought all parts of the computer except for the CD ROM drives and the graphic card fan a year ago, so it's fairly new. Didn't put it together myself, it was a guy at the computer store where I bought it that did that. I'm not sure how powerful the power supply unit it is. Where can I find out?

Sorry for the late reply. My whole computer decided it didn't want anything to do with me anymore. Everything except TS2 has worked fine for me, but now it suddenly seems it's the harddrive that is fried, since nothing is working properly since the day before yesterday, not even after reformatting it and doing a clean install of XP. Can't install anything, and it crashes all the time. So I hope these frequent crashes I've had lately is due to that too (I might be able to afford a new drive...). When I got the game, I didn't have any problems with it until about a month after I got uni. At first it was the money trees, too many going kaching at once would terminate the game, but once I knew that was it I worked around it, and the patch solved it completely. Then there was the overheating, which got better when cleaning the video card fan. These resent crashes, that happens all the time, is different. Before I only got crashes in play mode. Never in CAS, neighbourhood view, build mode, while saving etc. And certainly not this often. What happens is that I get an error message saying the game will terminate., I click ok (or whatever it says) and it throws me back at the desktop immidiately. The music goes on as usual and nothing seems to happen to the game until I click ok on the error message. Yes, I've had crashes ever since last spring, but I still don't think it's the video card drivers since I should've got these problems sooner after updating them if that was the case. Too much time has passed since then, imo. But that said, I'm so very far from being a computer expert that I can't be sure of anything.

I discovered something odd yesterday though. When running dxdiag (which tells me nothing is wrong...), it says "Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00 GHz (2 CPUs)" I went to look at System in my control panel, and it looks as if I really do have two CPUs (I have two identical entries under the CPU tab). It's a shame I didn't see this before the reformatting, as I don't know if this was the case before too. Does this means my computer thinks I really have two CPUs? Could this possibly be the seed of my problem, os is it simply a symptom of my harddrive losing it?