I installed as a package directly into the mods folder. Pulled apart the sims3pack with Delphy's installer then merged it along with some other premium content into one package using SimPE.

I've tried the fixes in the overrides folder just in case it made a difference. I think I've done it correctly. I just created a folder called overrides in the mods folder and plonked it in there.

If I download the dairy again and repeat the installation procedure without removing the one that's there now will this cause a problem or will I just end up with two copies - one of which will hopefully work?

After extensive searching I'm giving up and asking about this.

Whenever I try to get my sims to interact with the Milkin' It Dairy Coral my sims show the route failure bubble and refuse to go near it.

I downloaded it from here and decrapped it. I have installed KT's fixes (which I have just updated to notouching's fixes) and the ccmerged from Nona. I've tried them in all the mentioned places just in case it made any difference. The only difference I've found is that with KT's fixes the object cost nothing, whereas now with notouching's it is displaying a proper price. All other premium content works fine.

Any ideas? Do I just need to download the thing again (I'm trying to avoid it, it's combined in a package with many other files)?

Darn, just as I though. I downloaded them already merged unfortunately. I'm guessing there's no way to un-merge them once they've been done? Searches on this question occasionally hint that there might be a way, but only seem to lead to broken links or things which don't seem to exist anymore. Am I missing something?

If I download (for example) all the sims store hairs in one .package file then is it the case that I won't be able to delete them individually from within the game because they will all be one big file? I have tried deleting them in the past and it hasn't worked so I was wondering if this was the reason?

Whenever I send my sims on holiday to Egypt they arrive at the base camp frozen. I can't click anywhere and time doesn't move, the only thing that works is background animations such as trees moving in the breeze. This only happens in Egypt. Has anyone else come across this problem?

Various searches only threw up one reference to a similar problem from another site where the person said they thought it was something to do with having WA items in the house from vacation spots that hadn't yet been visited, but since this happens in all houses, even ones without WA items I'm not sure what this could have to do with it.

I've tried taking out all my mods and the problem still persists so I'm assuming it's an EA issue. Anyone have a workaround or know differently?

This is the thing I hate the most about Sims 3. What is the point of it? They do it even if there is a clearly identifiable route for them to take past each other without either having to stop. In the midst of several tiles worth of space they still choose to walk into each other and then stand around looking stupid for half a sim hour.

Ah perhaps I won't need extra cooling after all since this is England where the thermometer hasn't risen above 5C in weeks, but then again it's probably better to be safe than sorry. Might have a look for that gadget you mentioned, would certainly be interesting to see just how warm things are getting in there when Sims 3 is running.

I'm leaning towards getting a HD4870 myself at the moment. Seems to be in my price range and still considered a decent card.

Thank you Witch that's very helpful. My current card is a Radeon, albeit an old one, but I've always been happy with its performance up until it became too low spec to cope with the new Sims game, so sticking to the same make seems like a good idea.

I'm actually getting a whole new system, but I feel much more confident when it comes to processors, hard drives, RAM etc. Graphics cards are the component I find most difficult to choose because there's so many different things to consider and people want such different things from them.

Useful tip about the cooling though, I'll have to look into that a bit more; I was assuming the standard cooling system would be enough since I wasn't going for the top of the high end cards, but if you needed extra for a slightly high end one then I probably should consider it. I do have a fan on my current graphics card that my brother added for me after my even older card overheated and died; I'll have to ask him if it would still be suitable for a newer card.

Well now that's over with I'm dreading the time when I actually have to throw in the towel and reinstall AwesomeMod myself. I have just come back to Sims 3 after a long break so I'm still using a completely unpatched version with the very very old AwesomeMod that went with it. When I installed it all I did was download the monkey thing and double click on the package, I didn't have to cut and paste any files manually as far as I can remember, not even framework ones so the thing got a lot more convoluted in the last few months. I'm sure the instructions will see me through though, they don't seem overly complicated. Anyway the mod doesn't appear to be throwing any expiration messages at me, perhaps it's from before these were implemented if there was such a time? To be honest I'm perfectly happy with how my game runs at the moment and I'm not planning on patching any time soon so I'm hoping the thing won't expire on me. I can live with the minor annoyance of fridges resetting everytime I switch to a different family for now.

So to restate my previous question:

The manual and wiki say that current AwesomeMod will implement AwesomeMod jealousy routines but doesn't really expand on how it adjusts them.

I found this: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17154.0.html which says that the mod restricts jealousy to anyone of boy/girlfriend status or above and to sims being in the same room as each other. Is this everything it does?

The manual and wiki say that awesomod will implement AwesomeMod jealousy routines but doesn't really expand on how it adjusts them.

I found this: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17154.0.html which says that the mod restricts jealousy to anyone of boy/girlfriend status or above and to sims being in the same room as each other. Is this everything it does?

I would assume you're supposed to let the new copy overwrite the old copy. If not then this isn't as obvious as I first thought.

Hmm I think perhaps I phrased my last post a little strongly. I do understand a lot of the jargon and if there's anything I don't understand my brother tends to poke fun at me until I find out. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be that I find a lot of the advice on graphics cards comes from what I would probably term "hardcore gamers" who want graphics cards which will run their first person shooters at ultra high speed and resolutions in real time so they can play over the internet.

What I want is a card that will let me play the Sims 3 on high settings. I'm assuming that this requires a graphics card way below what the type of game described above would require (correct me if I'm wrong!) and I don't want to have to spend any more than required (I can't afford it for a start). I find it difficult to get advice on this, especially on UK sites where Sims doesn't appear to be as acknowledged by the gaming community as it is in America (which I know sometimes isn't much acknowledgement as it is). Very few people who offer advice relevant to the UK seem to play Sims 3, therefore they can't actually offer any first hand comment or review about whether said graphics card is any good with the game. Since this is all I want the card for this would seem to be a good thing to actually have before making a final decision. Maybe I'm just being over cautious but I don't have money to waste on a graphics card that sounds good in theory but just doesn't cut it with Sims 3. I know many people who had problems with supposedly "good" cards when it came to Sims 2 and I don't want to end up with similar problems.

I find myself running up against that very problem Rayea. I live in the UK and I just don't seem to be able to find a graphics card that isn't hideously expensive or just plain crap. I guess it would help if I knew anything about graphics cards but I find searching for advice on the internet rather worrying. I'm sure people develop a bit of a "I spent my money on this graphics card and it must be the best EVAR because reality will fold in on itself before I admit that I might have GOT IT WRONG" mentality. I'm sure there's places out there when people do know what they're talking about and give good advice, but it becomes difficult to know which places to trust, especially when you read so much conflicting advice using jargon you don't know the meaning of.

Then of course there is the added problem that I finally think that a graphics card seems to be in budget and decent but it turns out you can't get it in the UK except from select places which want to charge you a fortune for it. Assuming I had plenty of RAM and wanted to run Sims 3 on high settings is there a graphics card I should be considering that I'm actually going to be able to find in the UK which isn't going to bankrupt me?

Darn, so the only way to get a stick thin sim is through CAS? This is disappointing.

Heh ok I guess I asked for that. I didn't think of APO, I shall start using it immediately on nurserys. I guess my toddlers are doomed to not see any other parts of the house until they become children.

What was really puzzling me was why this had only just started happening. As I said previously they didn't have this obsession with following their parents around and rarely did it. I was wondering if I was the only one or if FT somehow altered this behaviour (unlikely, I know, since no one else here as mentioned this, I suppose it could be a weird hack conflict instead).

My toddlers are driving me mad. I don't know what's changed in my game but previously my toddlers were quite happy to autonomously play with the toys provided for them and only occasionally went to harrass the adults in the household. I always played with nobabyharrassment, but not the baby controller.

Now suddenly my toddlers seem to be obsessed with 'following' their parents around the house. Everytime I cancel the action it just comes back and they will only play with the toys if I literally lock them in the nursery. I've tried replacing nobabyharrassment with TJ's nobabytoddlerswarming in case this helped but it didn't.

Since my playstyle involves allowing sims to choose what skills they learn I hate having to direct them into using a specific toy, but this follow thing is driving me insane. I'm sure it never used to happen. Does anyone know how to stop it?

I have this problem too. It drives me crazy! I'm glad it's not just me though, because that means it's probably not a hack conflict that I have to go looking for. I'd been putting that off! Now I just have to work out why my toddlers with green aspirations and mood have suddenly decided they want to play with the toilet all the time again.

I recently downloaded the latest version of the lotdebugger. All was fine until yesterday when I tried to use the "prep sim for delete" option, when I got the attached error.

I'm thinking either I've downloaded something else that's causing a hack conflict or it's because I used that program by Dizzy which turns the batbox into a vase of flowers. I can't read these error logs at all so if someone could give a second opinion before I spend ages removing hacks to see which one is causing the problem I'd be grateful (my game takes 30-40mins to load from start up to lot). This error occured on two seperate lots and when I tried to delete a few different sims.

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I seem to remember a post a while back where someone was experimenting with trying to get their sim to die in the sea. IIRC in the end he repeatedly pissed himself and complained of comfort failue but essential motives like hunger and energy stayed just high enough to stop him dying no matter how long he was left in there. I assume this was an experiement without cheats though so I don't know how nouniprotect might affect things.

With some patience and a lot of messing about in SimPE and in game it is possible to rescue a neighbourhood that might at first appear trashed. Back when I decided to go back to playing my original nrighbourhood I had to pull it apart and stick bits back together to undo all the VBTs I'd done before we all knew any better. It takes a lot of work though, but if you're prepared to do it you might be able to save your neighbourhood.

I went to a couple just after I got FT but quickly realised there was no real point to them. You wait all that time for the lot to load only to find that it's broken and you can't get the compeitions to work anyway. I think I've deleted 2 all the NPCs that come with the lots now anyway.

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll make one last attempt to find my BV CD and if that fails I'll go with the ghost imaging thing.

Assuming I do find my CD (unlikely at this point, but still) and end up reinstalling does anyone have any knowledge/experience with how the EA store reacts in these circumstances. Is it going to let me redownload or is it going to throw a fit and refuse?

I have finally got a new, bigger hard drive for my computer and I'm planning to completely remove my old one and transfer everything to the new one, including my Sims 2 games.

Currently I have all the expansion packs and some of the stuff packs so obviously I'm going to have to install them all again on the new hard drive. Some of the stuff packs however I downloaded from the EA Store so I have no hard copy of the CD-ROMs. Am I going to be able to redownload them with no problems, bearing in mind that any cached information on my computer is not going to be on the new hard drive? (I'm assuming it stores necessary information under my account information on their server, but you never know with EA.) I've searched the EA store but there doesn't seem to be any information on this.

Secondly I know there has been discussion on this before but there doesn't ever seem to have been a definite conclusion. To patch or not to patch? Currently my game is patched up to Pets and I have the original FT patch, but in between those I never bothered and my game runs fine. Should I patch as I go along anyway?

Finally (and I know this is a long shot, which may make my previous to questions irrelevant) is there anyway if I stick the two hard drives in together to just copy the entire lot over to the new hard drive without having to install again? Normally I wouldn't even bother trying that but I've lost my BV CD and the idea of downloading a torrent fills me with dread simply because my internet connection is ridiculously slow. I'm assuming it wouldn't work because the registary keys would still be on the old hard drive and it would mash up all the links which point to the internal files. Just thought I'd ask though because I'm clutching at straws here. It's going to take long enough to install all the expansion packs I have the CDs for without waiting hours days to download something I technically already own.

I play at this angle too, although I do wizz around each floor level depending on what room my sims are in so I don't permentantly keep the camera in the corner, just keep the angle the same. The major flaw with this is that 90% of the time I can't see the pavement and so miss all the walk bys that like to trot by at regular intervals and more than once I've moved the camera to find that a random sim apppears to have invited themsevles inside without my knowledge. (This is because my sims BFF seem to take the view that they are allowed to just walk inside without waiting to be greeted. I've never seen the 'greet from afar' interaction because they won't stay ungreeted long enough for my sim to do it.)

I've had Securom on my computer since BV came out and since removing it was too much like hard work I've left it there and I've not had any problems related to that at all so far. I think the main problems were with it breaking the DVD burner and interfering with DVD/CD burning software. Since I have none of those things I haven't noticed any effects so far and, since I need a new computer anyway, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed rather than messing about with deleting Securom, which would very likely lead to me breaking my computer anyway.

After reading this thread though I'm beginning to think it was a really bad idea to have all expansion packs up to and including FT and then randomly decide to buy and install the H&M stuff pack. Since doing that my sims can't skill parenting, the metre just stays stuck at wherever it was before I installed H&M.

Jolrei you have far more patience than me if you go through that every time you install an EP! My method is to take out my neighbourhood and downloads and install the new EP. I then reinstall downloads (after checking for relevant hack updates) and run the game in order to turn on custom content (at this point I might have a little play if the new pack has installed a neighbourhood, like Freetime did, but more because I'm impatient than for any testing purposes). Finally I exit the game, put my neighbourhood back in place, run the game again and play!

Basically the game gets loaded once in order to turn custom content on (I hate that every EP turns it off by default) and after that I just dive in and play as normal. The game takes far too long to load to mess about testing everything step by step. So far I've had no major problems and only a couple of minor ones due to missing a hack update. Maybe I've just got lucky so far.

Jennydee, antiprankhack was the one which stopped the stupid pranks from happening, double check you've got the Seasons version of that installed. Also check through your downloads folder for any other hacks which affect autonomous socials or autonomous playing (since pillow fights are a play interaction) and try playing without them if they are none-awesome or updating them if they are JM's. If not then the hack conflict detector program is probably the way to go.