I deleted all of the files as instructed. However, I have no WorldCaches folder to delete. I restarted the game. No success.

A friend suggested that I delete the options.ini file. I did that and restarted. Success! All the neighborhood textures are back to normal.

Thank you for the help. I am attaching a screenshot of the blurry textures for future reference.

I am sorry, but to my embarassment I find that I am unbelievably stupid. How do I delete the "caches and World Caches"?

I wanted to split up my active household, moving out one adult and one teenager, and leaving two adults in the house. The game froze (there was a little pop-up that said "processing", which sat there for about half an hour), and I had to exit to windows and manually end the program with the task manager.

The game still runs fine, but when I first start playing a game, the entire neighborhood is black - there is no terrain paint. When I go to map mode, the terrain paints slowly appear, but are very blurry. If I then go back into my Sims' houses, the entire terrain (grass, rocks, roads) stays blurred - also the default terrain where it shows on their lots. Any terrain paints that I use to paint on their lots are fine. I have tried playing around with the graphics settings, with no success.

The three adventure destinations (China, Egypt and France) have the same blurry textures.

I have a nVidia 9500GT with 1GB memory on the card. Before this happened, everything was fine.

I have just trudged through 13 pages of posts, as suggested, trying different suggestions. No luck. It seems that I am in a unique position in that I am trying to install the CC after installing the patch. The workaround does not work for me. I have a shocking headache. Again.

I will now try uninstalling once again. Then installing the base game. Then installing WA. Then installing the CC. Then installing the patch. Then constructing the workaround. Then checking if it works. How to waste three hours.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

Before you ask: yes, I know that search is my friend. I searched, but, alas, did not find. Maybe I am too stupid to see the that the answers are right in front of me; in that case, I humbly accept any ridicule that you may care to fling my way.

I am terrified of the Grammar Police.

I have the base game (duh), patched to 1.2.whatever, and WA patched to 2.33.whatever. Both these are legitimate DVD editions, even registered in my name, how responsible! I also installed CAW out of curiosity, but its unfriendliness gave me a shocking headache and I uninstalled it.

I have always found it easier to get the store stuff from That Thread in the Pudding factory, installing it later on my dedicated Sims 3 computer which is not connected to the net.

When I originally installed WA, I had the issues of the empty blue lots and the much dreaded Error Code 16, so I stupidly uninstalled and reinstalled both base game and WA. I did not know that there was a workaround, and I was terribly anxious to start playing. In any case, the issue is that I deleted all custom content when uninstalling, and I never had the chance to re-install all my lovely CC until today.

Merrily going along, and with a song in my heart, I attempted to install the store stuff downloaded from you-know-where, using EA's distressing launcher. All non-store stuff installed without a problem, but all my lovely pilfered store things refused to install. It shows the little installation window and even kindly tells me that it was successful in installing, but the item stays in the "Downloads" tab, without the little icon that indicates that it has been installed, and does not show up in either the "Installed Content" tab, or in the game for that matter.

I have tried the convoluted directions of changing the Resource.cfg file and moving it all over the place, among other things, without success.

I just know my Sims will suffer a slow and painful death if I can't give them custom content from EA. The Modern Minimalist set is to die for!

Please help.

I am finally able to play Sims again!

There were many, many suggestions from all over. In the end, replacing the motherboard was what fixed the problem. Everything works beautifully now.

And I also upgraded to Vista, which seems more appropriate.

Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it!

Sorry, I've been away for a while.

I've bought a new psu, which will be delivered to me by Monday (this is South Africa).

I'll try the OneProcessorLaunch program, and I'll post back here as soon as I've tried it.

I feel so stupid, going to all this trouble just to be playing a goddamn game.

OK, first all the answers to your questions:


No, I'm only running the base game until I sort out the problem and that doesn't use the annoying EA launcher thing.


I'm only using the default Pleasantview hood until I sort out this problem, so however many character files comes with that.


Usually I have the Super Nude Patch 2, allenabq's Replacement Face Templates for CAS&BodyShop and AmberDiceless' plate replacement "ButterflyGold", but, again, until I sort out this problem, I have no hacks installed.

Nothing, until I sort out this problem... but usually about 1.5GB worth.

I have all EPs up to Freetime and only two SPs - Glamour Life Stuff and H&M Fashion Stuff. But, once more if you've missed it before, only the base game until I sort out the problem. And I don't use a no CD crack.

And now, an update on my little ForceCore solution of yesterday:

Very little, if anything, changed. Even though the game had been instructed to use only one processor, it kept accessing the second processor. Why? Why? I've attached a new screenshot, if anyone's interested.


I'll try that one tonight.


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So many questions, so little time!

I think I may have found the problem.

When setting the affinity the game has for only one of the two processors, I never checked in the task manager that it was actually using only the one processor specified. When I used process explorer, however, I noticed that the game still used the other processor from time to time, even though it had been told to only use one. And the periods that it was using the other processor was exactly the time that the game stuttered, as shown in the attached screen capture.

So I tried setting the affinity with Task Assign, to no avail. Then I found another program, ForceCore, which is supposed to do the same thing. But I got an error message - oxc0000135 - when I tried to run the program. Back to the drawing board once more. After doing a bit of research, I found that the error message seems to mean that the program needs MS's .NET installed. Which is the next thing I will do. I just wonder whether it needs .NET 1.1 or 2.0? Never mind, I'll install both.

And I'll update this thread as soon as I have done all that. And answer all the many, many questions. I'm selfish, I first want to try my little solution.

Pity I can only try it when I get home from work.

Sigh.

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I am in urgent need of help.

I finally upgraded my system from a Windows 2K, Intel P4 3gHz with an nVidia FX 5200 card and 1gb RAM to what is shown below, which I'm sure should be able to run Sims 2 three times over without glitches. The reality, however, is that the game runs smoothly for a few seconds and then badly stutters or jerks or lags or chops or skips or whatever the hell you want to call it. It does that for about 5-10 seconds and then runs smoothly for the next 5-10 seconds before doing its little thing again, world without end, amen. This happens in the entire game: in the neighbourhood screen, in live mode, buy mode and build mode and in create a family.

Other than with TS2, the new computer is on fire and is started up and raring to go within 40 seconds from pressing the power button! I don't play other games, so I am unable to test whether this is exclusive to TS2.

My computer's specs:
processor - AMD Athlon64 x2 6000+
motherboard - Asus M2N-VM DVI
graphic card - nVidia 8600GT 512MB
ram - 2 x 1GB DDR2-800
HHD1 - 40GB IDE (primary master) - contains all OS (including My Documents) and program files
HDD2 - 80GB SATA - data
CDROM - LG multi DVD writer (SATA)
PowerMax 350W psu

and
Windows XP Professional with SP2
DirectX 9.0c

Friday I spent the entire day on the net looking for solutions and trying them out. Apparently there is such a thing as a cpu affinity issue or some such which means TS2 can't utilise more than one processor. So:

• I installed the AMD cpu optimizer and I set the affinity to first one and then the other cpu in windows task manager, but I didn't try the forcecore thing since setting the affinity manually did nothing,
• I installed MS's KB896256 and KB924441,
• I started drinking,
• I made sure all background tasks were shut down,
• I updated the drivers for the motherboard, the graphics card, the cpu,
• I reinstalled Windows XP three times and TS2 with all the EA patches twice,
• I cursed an moaned and cursed once more,
• I scandisked and defragged,
• I changed the size of the page file (first to min 513k, max 1535k and then to min 3072k, max 3072k as someone else suggested) and moved it to a different physical drive,
• I tried to go without TS2,
• I installed only the base game with no custom content and turned down all the graphics options as low as they could go,
• I had withdrawal symptoms,
• I made sure both system restore and drive indexing were switched off,
• I tried "boolprop useshaders false" and "vsync off",

none of which did the slightest bit of anything to solve the problem. How I miss my old system! It was not perfect by a long shot, but at least I could play.

I found a suggestion on EA's website, which is to start the game with the -w and -nosound options. The game's performance was definitely better with the -w option, but -nosound had no visible effect. When I paused the game for a while and went back to it, however, the dreaded lag was back. Does this mean anything to anyone?

I've attached the DxDiag report file in case someone wants to look at the info therein.

How much longer before Sims 3 is launched?

Please help!

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