Black screen in Neighborhood view?

[Strangel]

Okay.. Here's ONE neighborhood I played in tonight:
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t83/Strange-Angel/SimCreepiness/ScreenShot129.jpg
Notice how everything looks normal? It looked like that BEFORE and AFTER I played in one of the lots.

Here's the OTHER neighborhood:
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t83/Strange-Angel/SimCreepiness/ScreenShot134.jpg
It looked fine when I started playing, aside from having a green, hilly grid for a preview picture. Still has that.

Both are custom 'hoods, and like I said, the second one looked completely normal on my first and second entry, while I was building sims. I put down two lots, played a little in both, exited back out to the neighborhood on a plan to make Downtown, and got a black screen. I thought at first it was just lagging a bit, my computer seems to be shooting for 100% CPU recently when it's usually running a fluctuation of 2%-15%. BUT. It doesn't matter how long I leave it up, it just doesn't load. After searching, all I could find that seemed to describe/show the same thing as I have was Lorelei's thread from a while back with a screenshot just like mine.

Now.. here's where her game and mine differ.. it's just that ONE neighborhood, not all of them.

[Kazzandra]

It means your neighbourhood just overloaded your graphics card. I had this happen when I was playing an extremely large hood with tons of neighbourhood decorations. Yes, one day, you just place one too many lots...

I recommend turning down all of your graphic card settings to the lowest of low, and if that still leaves it black, blindly delete trees/ other objects. Click until you make it into a lot, and then exit to see if the problem is fixed.
You could use SimPE to remove decorations, but I say bollocks to that when you can have fun poking in the dark.

[Strangel]

lol.. Thanks for the advice, Kazzandra. As far as it being one too many lots, I'd just made the 'hood - clean, no townies (aside from the Ottomas & Ramawhatevers, oddly enough) and put down two lots, made two sims, moved them into the two houses. I've never had a problem with this particular terrain before, but I suppose it could be ALL THE DAMN TREES! >.<

Okay I dug out the Terrain preview pic.. and tried your suggestion, which bought me time to drop in the other two houses/families I planned on putting here (on husband's basis that I've actually got a motherboard issue unrelated to Sims and/or graphics card) and to get a screenshot.
Here's what I'm seeing when I get the 'hood to show up. I deleted all the trees in the two circles and they're still showing on the landscape, but are no longer clickable. Now.. I've also noticed trees in the roadway when viewing in 'hood mode, but I've not seen any trees migrating onto lots/streets/etc from lot mode.

[Kazzandra]

Now get out of your game and delete your groups.cache file in your Sims 2 user data folder. That should solve the problem. All new neighbourhoods since Bon Voyage spawn an ass-load of trees during creation-- don't know why they thought that would be a good idea.

By the way, I seriously doubt this has anything to do with your motherboard.

[Strangel]

What he means is my game is running suddenly at 100% CPU after about an hour of holding open four tabbed pages in Firefox OR Explorer, where it used to fluctuate between 2% and 15%. I stopped installing at Seasons, so I don't have TSS, BV, FT, K&B, etc etc etc.. lol

[toad]

It looked fine when I started playing, aside from having a green, hilly grid for a preview picture. Still has that.

I'm not sure if this is still bothering you, but it's easy to fix - EA even posted on how to fix it: http://thesims2.ea.com/help/detail.php?help_id=91

The important bit:
"Adding a custom neighborhood picture

In order to create a custom picture to represent your neighborhood on the main menu, first save the picture you wish to use as a .png file (a 4x3 size ratio works best, but pictures with other proportions will be stretched to fit).

The file must be named N0XX_Neighborhood.png (where XX is the neighborhood number). Then place the file in the neighborhood's directory (e.g., My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N004)."
(You could put a picture of anything there, and it still shows up as your neighbourhood preview picture.)

[Kazzandra]

What he means is my game is running suddenly at 100% CPU after about an hour of holding open four tabbed pages in Firefox OR Explorer, where it used to fluctuate between 2% and 15%. I stopped installing at Seasons, so I don't have TSS, BV, FT, K&B, etc etc etc.. lol

100% CPU... download Process Explorer and see what's using that much of your CPU. Usually it's a virus or an anti-virus software... you don't happen to have the PC Doctor suite, do you?  It acts more like a virus than a remedy.

Anyway, if someething other than your System Idle Process it taking up more a great deal of your processing power while you're screen is on the desktop, your problem might not be software related, but I still wouldn't bet on it.

[Strangel]

angelofdarkness, that's perfect. Thanks! I hadn't realized that the terrain in question only had a Lush .png, I was using Dirt.

Kazzandra, I ran AdAware and McAfee whilst disconnected from the internet. It's the only way, apparently, for me to get it to complete the McAfee scan, otherwise it froze up with CPU listed at 100% for an extended length of time. Still took it a full day (talking like.. twelve hours) to scan, but both came up clean aside from AdAware finding the usual cookies, which I promptly removed. Those are the only scanners I use on this computer.
I keep my eye on the Task Manager when it starts acting up like this and it usually lists either Firefox or iexplorer as taking up masses of CPU. Not sure what triggers it, but once it starts, it's a sure decline to a hard reboot if I don't get ALL windows closed fast. Even then I have to reboot, but I can at least get the computer to respond once the windows have finished closing. If I just reopen the windows without shutting down, it escalates quickly back up to it.

[gjam]

Kazzandra, I ran AdAware and McAfee whilst disconnected from the internet. It's the only way, apparently, for me to get it to complete the McAfee scan, otherwise it froze up with CPU listed at 100% for an extended length of time. Still took it a full day (talking like.. twelve hours) to scan, but both came up clean aside from AdAware finding the usual cookies, which I promptly removed. Those are the only scanners I use on this computer.
I keep my eye on the Task Manager when it starts acting up like this and it usually lists either Firefox or iexplorer as taking up masses of CPU. Not sure what triggers it, but once it starts, it's a sure decline to a hard reboot if I don't get ALL windows closed fast. Even then I have to reboot, but I can at least get the computer to respond once the windows have finished closing. If I just reopen the windows without shutting down, it escalates quickly back up to it.

That was happening on my daughter's old PC a couple of years ago.  It's some kind of malware that masquerades as internet explorer and sucks up all your CPU capacity. If you cancel the process on the faux IE (in Task Manager), you'll see a small process with a name that's a random string of 4 or 5 letters start running for just a few seconds, then the faux IE starts up again.  If you cancel it several times in a row, it will go dormant for a while, but that's only a short term fix.  It starts up again later. The usual antispyware and antivirus programs don't fix it. Or at least they didn't back then. It's been a while since I looked for information. I never did succeed in getting rid of it -- the PC was old and she wanted a laptop, so I finally gave up.