Alright, thanks guys. I'm going to try playing off a backup and if that doesn't work I'll use simPE.

So, my game was totally fine until we had a power outage a couple of nights ago. This actually happens a lot and has never caused me huge issues before. However, when I reloaded my game this time, everything was fine in all of the neighborhoods except for the one that I'd been playing. There, all of the information has been wiped. The sims still exist and live in homes, but they are all set up so that they: don't have any family, don't know anyone, have no personality, no skills, bottomed out aspiration, no memories, businesses and jobs gone, ect. Essentially, what is left on that neighborhood is all the same sims that already existed and in their houses, but nothing else. I'm not sure if there's anything at all that can be done about it, and I honestly doubt there is, but I figured I would see if anyone had ideas.

I keep getting an error message, and I'm not sure why. Yes, I have hacks and custom content. The error started occurring when I installed apartment life. I think I have, at this point, updated all of my hacks, although it is possible that I missed one if it's from the days before I thought to put all the hacks in one spot. HCDU doesn't have any abnormal conflict errors (I have two hacks that it claims conflicts but that have never caused any problems, and removing one does not solve the problem).

The error message occurs in any circumstance (nothing particular seems to set it off) although I don't recall it happening on community lots. I do, however, get it whether or not any sims are present on the lot.

I started with a simple excel spreadsheet just to keep track of which families needed to be played because the scribbling on paper method failed when I kept losing the paper or forgetting to write it down. So actually, i started with a note pad. The note pad got a chart, and then the chart moved to excel when I realized that I could only make so many columns across the six inch page.

And then I wanted to keep track of Uni sims as well, but not mess up my neighborhood chart. So that became a second sheet on my excel workbook.

Then I needed a way to make sure that the sims who graduated Uni broke stayed broke and that I could tell the difference between Sally's cash and Susy's at Uni. So came the spreadsheet for cash spent and earned at Uni (which, granted, is often behind and I end up dividing cash evenly)

And then came several other spreadsheets, and now I'm up to six in my always-growing-less-simple Excel workbook.

the only important stuff to me really is knowing what I plan to do with the sim (which is still on paper) and who I'm playing

Alright, so the uTorrent guides have lost me some. Where would I find which port to forward to when downloading one of the sims2 games?

hmmm... not nearly as entertaining in daylight, although it's the kind of object that would go great in a dark multi-levels-deep basement.

not only are there no pictures on that, you wouldn't want to see them.
but I was too tired to be any fun to fight with, I'll try to do better next time

As I've just been put in place, I'll have to go find an av that represents me.

Not actually advocating downing kittens. Simply pointed out that no additional kittens were necessarily dying. But I certainly don't advocate the drowning of real kittens by human beings (since I don't think "god" actually drowns kittens) and have saved more than enough would-be drowned-kittens to cover my ass on that note.

And of course, what good's one without the other? However, if it bothers you, I can remove the av. I have no particular attachment to the av.

The shark-vat has almost has much win as the edible paste. I'm loving the picture and excited for the glue. I was quite a fan of Rubber Glue in elementary school.

^just have the sim walk back and forth over the pile until it does

If god's only killing kittens when people download Inteen, it probably doesn't top the number of kittens that are drowned in buckets every day. You could even say it's a good thing. Keeps the kitten population down.

As far as getting rid of unwanted sim children, I'm a fan of waiting until the child is born and then seeing if I can kill it by interesting means before getting it kidnapped by the social worker. But I'm a tad sadistic. The only abortion options are hacks though, or simPE, all of which have been mentioned.

Thank you, and while I'm being paranoid but not doing anything, is the firewall that comes with windows (xp on my desktop) good in your opinion?

I generally stick to challenges and make up my own rules that don't conflict with my play style to go with them (but having the goal keeps me interested and playing all my families instead of skipping the not-so-amusing ones or I end up with one family where the 2nd gen and 6th gen are both alive and married and equal aged... to brothers). When I get bored of the challenge or finish it, I wipe out the neighborhood. Or send it to a back-up location and then wipe it out.

Right next to that drop-box is a check box that says "allow incoming legacy connections". Should we uncheck this box since we are being as paranoid as possible?

I'd have to say your sim just fails at life. Unless it wasn't a kid, I'm not sure how kites work with adults. But it's annoyingly difficult to kill off sim children. Or even just electrocute them.

I don't claim to be an expert so you may not want to take anything I say definitively. But it looks like where they discuss that is in reference to the deleting keys section. So I would say yes, but I don't know that if I were you I would delete it just because I (not being you) said so.

I don't have SecuROM, so I'm not really worried about the removal aspect of it. I'm not even sure if I want to install any of the newer EPs, I was just curious as to how it worked. And I see that I worded things wrong - what I meant was that the No-CD does require a game because it is, as you say, just the .exe, but it doesn't require something within the legal version of the game.

No need to worry about me even if I do sound like I'll mess something up - just tell me what it is so that I can figure it out. I never mess around with anything I'm unsure of on my PC until I know everything I need to to do it.

So the No-CD is like any other "arr!"ed program once you install it as opposed to something that functions within the installation of the legal copy of the game then. Although I suppose that isn't really a question as it's kind of redundant; that just makes sense.
 

And sorry for my inability to use proper English.

Alright, so I've read the entirety of this topic (to which I am heretoforth eternally greatful) and the only question I've still got in regards to avoiding SecuROM is this:

Is there any benefit to buying the EPs as many people on this topic still seem ready to do if you are simply going to use a No-CD anyway besides the legal side of it and perhaps getting a serial number?