I've discovered the problem with some help from my tekky brother. Since I'm currently running the RC1 of Windows 7 when you install programs that change files in your Program Files directory it actually doesn't change the files IN program files it creates new ones in a dummy folder located under your user directory in a hidden folder called AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files This is a silly way of "protecting delicate files" in your programs files.

So essentially I had to repeat all these steps for all the expansion packs since its not actually getting the changes from Program Files at all. (The best work around for this if you're running vista or win7 is to install the game to a different directory, or just straight onto c:\) Since I don't feel like reinstalling the whole game I figured just installing the empty templates to the dummy folder would work for now. Hopefully this will solve issues for people in the future trying to install these empty templates on the newer operating systems, and really the easiest way to solve this is don't install to program files!

Thanks for the help sloppyhousewife, I wasn't actually trying to use empty templates on an existing hood, it just seemed like that the way I worded things I guess. Anyway, the problem is now solved and I can finally play the game how I want!

This is really frustrating me. I've followed everything from this thread and others like it and I still can't get rid of some of those damn lot bin families. I still have the Goodie, Gavigan, Newson, Cooke, Picaso, Traveller, Ramaswami and Ottomas families in my game. These are the families from Apartment Life, Free Time, Bon Voyage and Seasons. I've replaced the hood files for all of these, the stealth hoods too. All character files are gone as well, yet they still show up in the bin! I have downloaded and re-downloaded the empty templates thinking I got the wrong ones that only delete the townies but still no luck. Are the character files for these annoying sims stored somewhere else? I can't for the life of me figure out why they wont go away!

The files from these expansions and their sizes in my folders are as follows:

G001 - 297kb
G002 - 114kb
A001 - 159kb
M001 - 216kb
T001 - 186kb
V001 - 144kb
F001 - 280kb
F002 - 213kb

I'm trying to play the pleasantview neighbourhood and currently without running the hood in game there are 85 character files. This should only be the pre-made families and the townies they know. I obviously haven't been running this hood for fear of those stupid lot bin sims showing up so I've been testing the empty templates by creating a new blank hood.

So... any ideas why these sims are still hanging around? What did I do wrong?

Awesome, thanks a bunch Pandaah!

Yeah yeah I see the whole necromancy is bad thing but honestly this thread died out before any results were posted. I was wondering if anyone had a finished version of this for males/females that actually stick when going to a community lot. I'm totally SimPE dumb so I couldn't fix the existing ones for myself. I'm really interested in getting my hands on a complete version if someone has one fixed. Thanks and sorry again for the necromancy but I really want this in my game!

Thanks, I Shaved about 2gb off my installs just by doing the first 4 steps. I always thought those other language files in locale and the support folders were totally useless but I wasn't about to see just how useless they were. So thanks for being a guinea pig for us all! 

It's definitely the 12/14 version, I made sure to check before posting. So the error is still occurring for me in the latest version with going to finals only.

Marhis has updated the last name chooser dialogue hack for AL found here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=223528

Great, thanks!

What do you do when the Instances don't match? In the zip file it contains 3 different BHAVs but the only one that matches any on my custom trash compactor is the one that ends in 00001005 what do i do with the ones that end in letters, they don't seem to exist in the file.

Get JM's mod here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8793.0.html Does the same thing but so much better.

I wonder if people search the forums for "inteen" just so they can use that picture.. hehe

Ok, I'll check out the unlinked characters and see whats going on with that. If they aren't just dead sims I'll make sure to delete them so my neighbourhood doesn't explode.

Ok, I removed all my custom content from the folder, started up the game and played that sim. She came home from class, no crash. While she was still on the lot I saved and exited the game. Put all my stuff back into the download folder, fired up the game again, sent that sim off to class and she came home without it crashing. Now I noticed I could get her to call work and quit again. I think that problem was a conflict between JM's job fix hack and the inteen, so I got jordi's version. I quit her job and played the sim for awhile. Shes now in the last semester of college and the game hasn't crashed once. Still confused as to what might have been causing it to crash, but at least the problem seems to be fixed for now.

Is there a way now to see if the patch did indeed delete any of the tour guides in my game? I know when I go to prep sim for deletion there are a whole bunch of characters under a menu called "unlinked" are those just dead sims or broken sims?

thanks for the help so far jolrei, I really appreciate it.

The thing with her is that she was aging just fine, I had her half way through college before she started to crash my game every time she stepped foot on the lot. I don't think I would be able to get her on any lot long enough to do anything to try and fix the problem. After thinking about it, I installed the patch before she started crashing, so I'm wondering if somehow that screwed it up, since the patch says it will "remove" unneeded tour guides. I'm guessing that my hood now has a bunch of broken character files in it now, thats the only thing I can really see could be wrong. I suppose I could delete her using the tutorial, but if there happens to be messed up files in my game now thanks to the patch, it would be kind of pointless as my game is just going to explode anyway.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway, for now I'm just going to play another hood until I can figure out if I can save the other one or not.

Ok, I've searched all over these forums and have yet to find a solution to the sudden problem that cropped up in my game. The spawn of the one the pleasant girls has just gone off to Uni. Now before I could get her to call -> go to college she transitioned automatically to an adult. So I de-aged her with the insim and brought her into the college hood with the "send sims to college" button in the college neighbourhood (cause I had to create one as one didn't already exist) When I stuck her on a lot she was an adult sim, still with her teen job. So I de-aged here again into a YA. Now she ended up with a blue face, still had the adult age bar and still had her job. I somehow got the YA age bar to show up (I forget how I manged that) but the carpool still came to get her for her job. Even after directing her to quit her job the carpool was still coming for her. Now she is in her Junior year I believe and every time shes on the lot it crashes. I've tried to move her to a different lot, same thing happened when she got back from class, game instantly crashes when she appears. I tried to summon her onto another lot, she crashes that lot too. She is wearing custom content, but not the mesh by HP thats been known to crash the game. She has custom hair and makeup but stuff I've been using forever.

Is there a way to tell if somehow her data got corrupted? Is there some way I can kill her? Every time I try to suicide her the game crashes cause it doesn't like her. I was going to delete her using the deleted II method, but she has family and apparently you aren't supposed to do that.

I really like my hood, I'm playing the 3 linked maxis hoods that I downloaded at Peasantry, and I've been playing it since BV came out. I've not deleted any sims from a house or the lot bin. I've not moved any into a new neighbourhood or moved any from another one into this one. As far as I can tell I've done none of the things that have been mentioned to be a VBT. Unless changing a sims age is now falling under that category.

I think I've added as much detail as I can think of. Is there a way to now save my hood from this sim or must I now restart and hope the same unforeseeable problem doesn't happen again?

Note: I did try playing in testing cheats mode and no errors cropped up before the whole game just crashed.

So it seems to be a problem with the baby controller. I've stopped using it and I noticed that they aren't rabbit head obsessed anymore.

I just got this myself in the game. I'm also running all EPs up to Bon Voyage. I'm going to assume this is a Maxis/EA bug or we all have the same broken mod installed.

Thats why I only give them the rabbit head, because charisma is a crappy thing to make them learn later on in life. Only the obsession is so bad I actually had to delete the toys to teach them to walk/talk/potty and to feed them, put them to sleep and all that other crap. I'd cancel the action on the toddler and as soon as I did they cued it right up again and went back to playing with it.

That might be it, I stopped using it for awhile but now I'm using it again. Maybe I'll stop once more, cause thats just really annoying.

Is anyone else noticing since installing Bon Voyage that toddlers are seriously obsessed with that damned rabbit head? As soon as they wake up they go straight for it, and when you make another sim try to interact with them the action drops out of cue. So in order to train my toddlers I have to cancel the toddler's play with rabbit action and quickly make the parent interact with the kid or else they damn things will play with the rabbit head until they pass out.

I'm not sure if this happens with any of the other toys, mainly because the rabbit head is the only one I ever really use in the game. I'm also not sure if this could be the fault of a mod, though I'm not sure which one it would be, as all the mods in my game were deemed clean by hackdiff.

So.. anyone else noticing this or is it just me?

Oh ok, I guess that works too. Thanks!

My stupid sims always want to learn skills while on their vacation. Seeing as they can't the damn wants just clutter the slots and make it impossible to fill any normal vacation-like-wants. Is it possible to squash the damn "I wanna learn how to cook, clean... etc" while on vacation lots?

Pretty sure this came up clean in hackdiff for me. I've got it in my game and I haven't noticed any problems with it.

Not sure about the servo ones but pregy wear any clothes is broken and yes the comm lot one is broken too, sad.

Hackdiff says this is definitely broken and incompatible in BV. Using it would probably make your game go 'splodie.

Damn BigFoot, stupid hairy beast of a man.. *grumbles*

Would this be a lot to fix? I'm really going to miss this mod...