Hi eccentricgnat,

Thank you for that very nice post.

I stopped getting the the error messages, but it's still the same regarding the weird "Newspaper" look.
I'm thiinking I might just have to dress and change hairs on approx. 140 female townies...gad! Thank goodness for the insiminator...

I just really want to know what is causing this to happen so abruptly one day, and fix it. You know, it's either my pc, or I'm missing an important file/driver in Vista somehow.
You know, we did have a bad storm around that time. I went to boot up ,a nd it wanted me to use "Safe mode".

I am co-authoring a story with another writer, and I need to do my part... sigh.

Thank you eccentricgnat. 

I never had a problem with Vista until about three months ago. I bought my pc approx. one year ago.

I've looked everwhere, of course pc techs don't know a thing about "The Sims 2"... So my only hope is here and on MTS2.

I would love to be able to download default clothing and hairs for the base game. I think that would might be a great.
Howver, I only have eye's and skintones that are defaults, and I looked via google, etc.. and that didn't turn up anything. I know Warlokk has some default clothing, but they are for his body shapes.

I just don't know what to do now. I'll keep this here, and just wait... Maybe someone will know what exactly my problem is.
BTW, J.M. had a link on another thread about installing xp, instead of Vista, but that makes me quake in my boots just thinking about doing that, by my lonesome.

Thank you.

Hi jsalemi,

Do I replace all the ep's 3d pkg, and nothing else, because I was just told to do that, and it didn't help. But I only did the last ep, "Bon Voyage".
With that, I just reinstalled the "objects folder", but you're saying to just replace the 3d one, am I correct?

Thanks for helping, I almost think it's my pc, since i got that "Windows host process Rundll32 has stopped working" pop-up.

Hi, my latest update.

Ok, I saved my game, renamed it and put it on my desktop.
I uninstalled my base game and all of my ep's. This is a further account of what happened...

~Installed my base game, started the game and everything looked great.

~In stalled University, started the game and what pops up? Newspaper heads, bah!
So I uninstalled it, and reinstalled that ep. The second installation looked fine.

~Installed Nightlife, everything looked ok.

~Installed OFB, started up game, and I got "newpaper" head simmies.
So uninstalled it, and installed it once again. Everything looked fine.

~ I got "Seasons" from the EA store, so I have to use the game installer from there.
I keeped getting error notices, so I deleted the EZ store installer, re-downloaded it, installed "Seasons" again, and everything looked fine.

~ I installed BV, started game, and got "newspaper head"!
So I uninstalled it, reinstalled it and started up game, still the same. Again I uninstalled, reinstalled that ep, but got "newpaper head".
Once again I uninstalled, reinstalled it twice after that. And I've still got "Newspaper head".

This took my all day yesterday, yet I'm back where I was. It was so close...

And I'm still up to any other suggestions. Thank you.

EDIT: I also kept getting an error through the reinstall. "Windows host process Rundll32 has stopped working."

Weird. Ok so I'll reinstall the game and all the ep's?
After backing up.

I'll be back to let you know what happened. Looks up into the sky and shakes fist!

Thanks for your patience.

 

Ok, I search all the files in the folders, I came to one that was different in date then the rest:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\ EnabeColorOptionsMMat 12/31/2007 12:19 am.
The rest were, 8/18/04 and 3/27/07 that date I reinstalled it.

Other than that, I'll be awaiting any replies. Thank you.

Gad! Excuse my denseness, I'm finding it challanging to understand your directons, my fault. 
How can I access the dates exactly? Apparently I can't figure it out...

Your saying its in the "properties" of the pkg files themselves? Or did you mean another way?
   

Thanks for replying Kyna.

When you say "time stamp" are you refering to the time that is listed in the folders "properties"?

If you did, they are all have the same time listed, which is when I re-installed the game on the 27th of this month.

Edit: Oh, thats right you said, "folders in the folder". I did check again, and there are three folders in the catalog folder.
They are dated 3/28 instead of 3/27. They are: Bins, CANHObjects and Patterns...

I will check the others now. But that "Patterns" one sounds fishy to me, since that is what is missing from the meshes, right?
Or are "Patterns" different than textures?

Ok, I installed my new video card; I love that thing, is that possible?
It took care of all of those long graphical artifacts, and holes in the clothing and skins, stc..
However it didn't help with the games clothing and hair. Custom hairs and clothing are all fine when worn, or pictured on body shop.




This is what I've done after installing my new graphics card and fan.

~Took out all of my default skintones, per Bruce's post..
~ I took out all of my downloads and saved them to my desk top, renaming it.
~ Did a clean install with the base game and all of my ep's and patches.

So with no custom items, I started up the game to have a look-see and sure enough I still saw them wearing textureless meshes!
It was only the females that are aflicted with this. And with further inspection, I notice it is only the base games clothing and hairs, and not the other ep's.
It looks like it affects all ages, as I've seen children to elders looking this way.

Just for slaps and tickles, I inspected my base game cd's for scratches or smudges... Nope, they were almost pristine.
Other than that incredibly annoying thing, the game is super fast, and I get a lot of eye-candy with the card.

I think this the strangest thing I've ever come across, considering there were no hacks or custom items in the game at the time.
I'm completely combobulated about this issue, sniff...

Again I would be very grateful for any and all replys you may have.

Thank you.


 

Hell, maybe it was only me. I can take things out of context now-a-days.
So I'm sorry if I was being snarky.

This poor thread looks like a mess now, lol. Lessoned learned for me.

By-the way, I'm not a troll, I'm merely acting like an dweeb these last few days.
I think J.M. was talking about the ravencrow/earth2luna, but I won't be surprised to get another from him shortly.

Thanks for helping me clear this up.

Witch, As I see it you actually started this.
I simply asked a question, then you ask why I had ravencrow/earth2luna.

Posting,
Your right I did edit it, after thinking how rude you were.
Now, your here calling me names, though you don't even know me.



You know, I think my mind is doing great considering I had a stroke a year ago.
Try being a little nicer about it next time, hell, even a humorous post would be better than what I got.

Yes, your right, thank you crystalclear. 

Oh my gosh! He was talking to ME? 

Great Bruce, thanks for your help.

How did you know?

Thats right J.M. tell her to knock it off...

Nonthing you should be concerned about.






Ravencrow/earth2luna

Ok, I'll have a look at. 
Thanks J.M.






Ravencrow/earth2luna 

Hi, Bruce, so I should take out all my defaut skins after reinstalling? Would the same thing happen if you used defaut eye's too?
Thank you for your reply.

Hi Ziggy, no, I didn't read it, of course. After all of this happened, I did read that the ATI X1900 ran hot.
It wasn't the original card that came with my pc, almost a year ago.

But because I needed to return the ATI, the orginal card I did reinstall is a Nvidia Getforce 7300 LE, which
played my game for about a week, and then wouldn't play my game any longer.

Do you know if my GeForce 9600GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express will need a card fan too? Do heat sinks help with cooling?
Thank you.

J.M. How hard would it be for a complete pc novice to install this in place of Vista?

Ravencrow/earth2luna

Hello everyone,

Oh boy where do I start. First of all please forgive me is I've posted in the wrong thread.
I had a mild stroke a few years ago, and the old synapsis' aren't firing the way they used to.
So pelt me with rocks if you must. I don't care as long as I find out what was happening.

I searched for similar problems on this site, actually anywhere I could, even ATI's support.
However, they gave me a list of troubleshooting tips to try, which yielded nothing.

I had bought a ATI Radeon x1900 256mb express video card almost a year ago.
It lasted approx. seven months, before I started experiencing strange graphical artifacts, etc..

I guess I should give you my specs. of my pc, since I just installed my old dinosaur of a video card, so the game doesn't play at all.


Now some actual pics of what was going on.





The last pic was towards the end. The "newspaper look" started to show up
on the townies, but only the females were effected, weird huh?

With the townies, the hair and clothing were affected, which showed in bodyshop too.
It was also all the original sims 2 base game hair and clothing.

~I tried a few things per the directions of ATI's support.
~I bought a new 500 watt PSU, and another two gigs of memory, totalling four gig's.
~As I mentioned earlier, I installed the newest driver updates for alot of my hardware.
~I always defrag, turn off background programs like virus programs, etc..
~Did a clean uninstall and reinstall for my base game, and extensions.
~Started up the game after taking out my download folder, and it was still happening.

I thought it must be my craphics card so I got a refund, and purchased a "BFG Tech BFGE96512GTE GeForce 9600GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card" from Newegg, that should be here in about a week.
But something is nagging at me, and I wonder if it is just the graphics card.

Anyway, I thought to come here since you are all a bunch of brilliant folks. Though I knew you might just pelt me, lol.
If you have any other questions, or if I didn't make myself clear, please let me know. Thank you for any help you can lend.

Ravencrow/earth2luna

I love my Dell. Brand new, but it had Vista installed. So I coundn't really play the game well w/ the graphic card that came with it.
So I replaced it with a ATI Radeon X1900, 256mb.
Slapped another gig of ram in it, and it purrs like a kitten. I LOVE IT... Oop's did I already say that?

BTW, I have the same sound errors, but they only come up in the cheat line.