I guess you wouldn't have liked my old icon inspired by Un Chien Andalou...

What about cheap coffee pots? We get two expensive espresso machines but no bargain store versions? Unless they are one of those things that will eventually pop up in the $ims $tore...

I doubt it. I have downloaded houses, textures and Sims from different sites and I still have not experienced ANY crashes with the Awesomeware in place.

Could this be Vista related? My computer runs on XP and apparently Marhis has no problems with a Mac.

Well, that was certainly unexpected. I always pictured you as tanned, dark haired and exotic looking in a gypsy/New Orleans fortune teller way... but then I thought the same thing about Scotty...   

The best part was that random Sim in the white shirt... Oh poor Whatsihisface! Boo Hoo Hoo Boo Ho... wait is that food over at the table?! *rushes over* Oh Nom Nom Nom.

Insanity Prelude:

My guess is that they want to be able to monopolize all CC and charge for them themselves. If they block all third party content then all the sheeple will have to go and get all their shtuff at the Sims 3 Store. Kaching!

Oh dear! I forgot all about coconut!! There is hope!!!

*dances awkwardly*

Barf! I won't touch TS3 AT ALL if there are no mods by Pescado or TwoJeffs.

I'm also ready to partake in open warfare if EAxis gives T$R's "artistes" access to their encrypted codes. Not that something like that would ever happen, right? Right? 

Every time this happened I got the notification that BV had been uninstalled after the game finishes loading in the Free Time screen. Clicking okay lets me continue to the Neighborhoods screen, but in any Neighborhood I enter the the icon for the BV subhoods is disabled, so there is no access to the vacation hoods and any BV vacation actions are no longer available.

Going back to the Programs Menu in Windows the expansion is no longer listed with the others under the EA Games menu. The files are still in the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES folder, but the game just doesn't recognize them as being there. I don't use the launcher, I boot the game from a shortcut linked to a No-CD exe.

Like I mentioned before, I just reinstalled BV and Free Time. I have checked the Registry for errors and I can't find any system problems, so I'll run the game for the next few days and see if things run okay this time.

The BV files were still in Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage and the expansion was still listed under Add or Remove Programs, but if I tried clicking on the remove button nothing would happen. I'm pretty sure that it's a registry problem, but can't pinpoint what triggers it, since it only happens with Bon Voyage and no other applications are ever affected  I thought that it might be something related to TS2 itself.

It can't be a Windows restore point issue because I installed everything in order and then patched before installing the next expansion, so Teen Style and Free Time were installed after BV and they stayed in place every time. It's definitely not SecuROM and I also ran virus scans and there's nothing in that regards.

Anyway, I reinstalled BV again and I'll keep close tabs in case that it happens again. I hadn't thought about it being a hard drive problem, so I'll check on that also. Thanks for the tip.

I thought about that, but if that's the case why does it keep occurring?


I knew about that particular installation issue and it didn't happen to me.  The first time BV got uninstalled it was weeks after installing Free Time. After reinstalling the expansions, it happened again days after playing the game and visiting vacation lots with everything working fine. This last time it was after a fresh installation and I decided to start from scratch, so I didn't use my backups or old downloads, so the only downloads I have are a few clothing recolors and some wallpapers. The only hacks I have are from a freshly downloaded Director's Cut, so tight pants should not be an issue and neither is SecuROM, I tripled checked on that and there is not trace of it anywhere in my system.

It's just weird that whatever is happening only affects the Bon Voyage installation. If there is no alternative I will just stop using BV and keep the rest of the expansions,  I just want to make sure there is no major problem about this happening.

I have a recurring problem with Bon Voyage, short story long, the darn expansion keeps getting "uninstalled".

Back Story: Sometime in April I started the game and as soon as it got to the Neighborhoods screen a pop-up message informed me that since the BV expansion had been uninstalled all vacation lots were unavailable and prompted me if I wanted to continue. I had not uninstalled Bon Voyage. I logged out of the game and checked that indeed, according to Windoze, the expansion was uninstalled. I had been playing the game for weeks, so it was not an instance of installing an expansion/stuff pack and something going wrong in the process. After re-installing from BV up and everything happening again after a couple of days I got fed up and uninstalled the whole Sims 2.

Recent History: Two weeks ago I got nostalgic for some dumb little pixels trying to kill themselves all the time and re-installed the whole blasted thing again. Everything worked fine, Life was good. Today I went to play and up comes the same pop-up telling me that BV had been uninstalled.

So, what is going on? I've been coming to MATY almost every day for years, to make sure I'm aware of any problems with the game and to see who Pescado has insulted and I can't remember anyone having this particular problem. Search was no help at all. I live alone *sniff*, so it's not a case of someone playing a prank either.

My Set-Up: Base game with all expansions up to Free Time with all patches up to date. Stuff Packs: Family Fun (patched), Glamour, Happy Holidays, Celebration, H&M and Teen Style. SecuROM-Free with No-CD crack.The only hacks I use are Awesome, so that's not the problem.

Any ideas, anyone?

Bueller? 

Okay, you asked for it...

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=138686

Uhm, enjoy? 

That's only because she doesn't look like Paris! 

I don't have Vista (and I never will) but I use 7-Zip, which lets me auto-rename the RTFMs as I unzip files. Works for me.

If we follow Aggie's rules about looking for the worst example of Sims used to actually try to promote user-created content I think Oepu (photo's submission in #43) fits the bill more than any submission thus far. Even though I have several of Oepu's items in my downloads folder I did not even consider downloading those skintones because of the hideous models or even worse, the face replacement templates also available. Oepu's models always look depressed and the proportions are really off, it's like seeing Rumer Willis in Sim-form or something...   

The Sparkling Eyes model in page one (by natef005 at MTS2) is quite hideous mostly from the custom content on her (or him, if you catch my drift...), so I can't think of it as a truly fugly model, rather I would say it's fugly make-up. Same thing with Madame Ugly's entry of the "Movie Screen Forehead", the hair is terrible, but with a different hairstyle the model wouldn't be bad. On the other hand, Cevic's model (the other entry in #43) is truly disturbing.

Some of the others are not necessarily ugly, they are just realistic. I have actually seen real people that look like spimmigold's entry (#52) or the three kids in # 46.

There is only one entry that really made want to hurl and that was that dolls lip-pops atrocity in post # 57.  *shakes fist at Quinctia*

Yuck! Shiny, greasy AND pimply skins. Who made them?

Neverwinter Nights 2 uses SecuROM, but it's not the aggressive version that Eaxis uses. It's similar to the one in Titan Quest, it does put stuff in your registry, but it removes itself when you uninstall the games and I never experienced any problems. I reinstalled NWN2 shortly after cleaning the computer from the BV mess and removed it a couple of weeks back, checked for SecuROM files and everything was still okay.

That said, the ARR version is probably the best bet if you don't want SecuROM anywhere near your computer.

This is so sweet, it's just like one of my family reunions!

*sniff*

Sure they can, they have done it before. Anyone remembers Origin Systems and the Ultima series?

It is blinking in and out and it has been doing that since they uploaded. I had to clear my cache a few times to make it appear again on the page.

Check to see what stove you have in the dorm, it should be the ShinyTyme Cooktop one or the Food Server won't show up. You also need to have some counter islands and at least one sink (or dishwasher) .

Speaking of which, I just found out that my CD/DVD burner doesn't work anymore, must have happened just before I was able to remove SecuROM, because I had tested it shortly before and it was okay. It can read cds fine, but if I try to write anything to it I get a "There is no disk in the drive" message even if there is a disk in it.

I also found out the hard way that my System Restore seems to be borked, this happened after I installed BV and I had the silly idea of trying to restore to the previous week, only to find out that I couldn't restore to a point prior to 9/15 (when I installed the game). I don't know if this is actually SecuROM's fault, but I've never had a problem like this with any of my computers before.

Anyway, I was wondering if anybody else that removed SecuROM has tested their cd burners or if anyone has any ideas if there is a way to fix this before I go and have it replaced.

Search is your friend:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4274.0.html

Well, yes, that's exactly what it means. If it was truly fixed then it should work for everyone all the time, otherwise it means there are still problems with it. Even Pescado has to do some tweaking on his stuff once in a while, but he doesn't whine about it... just saying...