Did you take out your downloads folder and still obtain the same result?
Alas, yes. I backed up my entire "The Sims 2" folder and removed it from the "EA Games" folder, apparently that forces the game to rebuild the entire thing, so there was absolutely no custom content at all in it, just the game as it is when it's first started...and the beds, they do not work. I won't say that *none* of the beds work, but I've tried a dozen of them in several lots in three neighborhoods, so I'm pretty confident this is a global problem. I tried to narrow down the issue in several configurations, whittling it down from custom content problems to possible other problems in my game's user data, until I appear to be left with nothing but the game itself, and beds are still borked.
Right now I'm pretty well resigned to having to reinstall the blasted game (I have NL, Uni, Seasons, and Celebration Stuff, but none were installed recently), and, while annoying, that's do-able...I am really concerned that if I restore my backed up data, it will break the game again, since now I know that moving occupied lots into a game is Very Very Bad. I did have InSIM and FFS Debugger (but not debug mode) active when this happened, but it does pretty well boggle my mind imagining that either of them would corrupt the game itself. Potentially blow up my Sims, yeah, but not the actual game! So...I don't know at this point if I need to nuke just the game, or all of my Sims as well. I'd rather try the potentially very tedious task of fixing my neighborhoods if I just happened to be unlucky and some game system data got corrupted. Figure they need some repair work anyway.
jennydee, I did try something like that, thinking that some of the beds got glitched, but it wasn't that. Glad it worked for you though, and it's something I'll keep in mind if anything starts acting up like that.
EDIT: ARGH. I have no clue why this worked, but I just went back in with all my custom content just as it was, for a final check--it appears that it was a lot that had glitched, as when I entered it in debug mode, all the residents were reset and now the beds work on all lots when they didn't before.
This game can be so frustratingly random. Anyhow...*headdesk* It works now...so...never mind.