I've had similar problems since re-installing: I now have Uni, NL. OFB, Seasons and all stuff packs up to H&M. No Pets, BV or teenstyle yet. I've also got basegamestarter in operation. I'm playing with hacks and not much else in my downloads folder to test out the new set up and I have 3 custom beddings showing in game from one sub-folder, but none of my hacks are working. My lotdebugger isn't in misc misc and my sims are behaving really unawesomely - I'd forgotton how annoying they are!
Have you been through the MTS2 checklist? (
www.modthesims2 - "my cc isn't showing" is one of the FAQs in Help/Downloads) I've tried "the bodyshop trick", but I haven't done their list of safe downloads. I've deleted the groups.cache every time I've played - hasn't helped so far. The "bodyshop trick" made me wonder if the game just isn't seeing the sub-folders for some stupid reason, so I've made a brand new sub-folder and moved Pes's hacks into it. I'm going to un-subfolder a few things and see if that helps. I also ran the registry cleaner and chkdsk as I've moved stuff around on my PC during the install. I'm running from Seasons disk, not H&M. DK if that's right, but H&M has securom and I haven't DL'd a safe version. Can't see why that would impact on Downloads though. I'll post if I find the answer today.
UPDATE - re-installed Basegamestarter and my hacks are back (sighs with relief). Numenor said BGS got confused about where to point sometimes with the newer stuff packs and EPs. DK what exactly was going on, but that was my problem
If you've installed BV, you've got Securom already. By all means avoid it if you've already got rid of it once and don't want to have to do it again! Or, avoid the patch because of the way it deletes those tourguides They need to be cleaned up with deleted 2 electric boogaloo (in the War Room). The patch isn't going to help with missing CC anyway.