Bon Voyage goes Buh-Bye

[Xuriel]

I have a recurring problem with Bon Voyage, short story long, the darn expansion keeps getting "uninstalled".

Back Story: Sometime in April I started the game and as soon as it got to the Neighborhoods screen a pop-up message informed me that since the BV expansion had been uninstalled all vacation lots were unavailable and prompted me if I wanted to continue. I had not uninstalled Bon Voyage. I logged out of the game and checked that indeed, according to Windoze, the expansion was uninstalled. I had been playing the game for weeks, so it was not an instance of installing an expansion/stuff pack and something going wrong in the process. After re-installing from BV up and everything happening again after a couple of days I got fed up and uninstalled the whole Sims 2.

Recent History: Two weeks ago I got nostalgic for some dumb little pixels trying to kill themselves all the time and re-installed the whole blasted thing again. Everything worked fine, Life was good. Today I went to play and up comes the same pop-up telling me that BV had been uninstalled.

So, what is going on? I've been coming to MATY almost every day for years, to make sure I'm aware of any problems with the game and to see who Pescado has insulted and I can't remember anyone having this particular problem. Search was no help at all. I live alone *sniff*, so it's not a case of someone playing a prank either.

My Set-Up: Base game with all expansions up to Free Time with all patches up to date. Stuff Packs: Family Fun (patched), Glamour, Happy Holidays, Celebration, H&M and Teen Style. SecuROM-Free with No-CD crack.The only hacks I use are Awesome, so that's not the problem.

Any ideas, anyone?

Bueller? 

[Roux]

Maybe there's a registry error?

[MajorMercedes]

This happened to me when I got BV.  I opened it up and it "politely" informed me that Seasons had been uninstalled.  I reinstalled it, and it never happened again.

I don't see how tight pants could produce that much of an issue, however, you might want to make sure the suckrot is gone- it does produce said kind of issues.

Which brings me to the question WHY?!?!? won't they get a new anti-piracy program instead of forcing their customers to remove it for the sake of their computers?  That defeats the whole purpose of having anti-piracy software!

[Xuriel]

Maybe there's a registry error?

I thought about that, but if that's the case why does it keep occurring?

This happened to me when I got BV.  I opened it up and it "politely" informed me that Seasons had been uninstalled.  I reinstalled it, and it never happened again.

I don't see how tight pants could produce that much of an issue, however, you might want to make sure the suckrot is gone- it does produce said kind of issues.

I knew about that particular installation issue and it didn't happen to me.  The first time BV got uninstalled it was weeks after installing Free Time. After reinstalling the expansions, it happened again days after playing the game and visiting vacation lots with everything working fine. This last time it was after a fresh installation and I decided to start from scratch, so I didn't use my backups or old downloads, so the only downloads I have are a few clothing recolors and some wallpapers. The only hacks I have are from a freshly downloaded Director's Cut, so tight pants should not be an issue and neither is SecuROM, I tripled checked on that and there is not trace of it anywhere in my system.

It's just weird that whatever is happening only affects the Bon Voyage installation. If there is no alternative I will just stop using BV and keep the rest of the expansions,  I just want to make sure there is no major problem about this happening.

[talysman]

When you say you checked and found that Windows really did report that BV was not installed, I'm assuming you mean it's not listed in the Add Or Remove Programs control panel. Which means it's not in the registry. However, are the BV files actually missing from Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage?

Here are my two theories:

1) Something's triggering the Windows restore feature to restore the computer to a time prior to the installation of BV. The way to test this would be to re-install BV and immediately install some trivial program. If both BV and the trivial program disappear, the system is going back to a restore point. If you installed the packs in order, though, this wouldn't be the explanation, since it would mean FT should be uninstalled at the same time. You can, however, see if you can thwart this by installing BV and immediately setting a restoration point This is especially useful if the BV files are still there and it's just the registry entries that are being deleted.

2) Something's messing with the registry, probably a virus. Or SecuROM, but you say you're SecuROM-free, so a virus seems more likely. Scan for viruses. Scan the registry for damage. Scan with the System File Checker. Scan, scan, scan!

OK, there's also the off-chance that it's a hard-drive problem and, somehow, only the sectors with the registry are damaged. So you might as well scan the hard drive, too. If it starts showing a lot of bad sectors, you're screwed.

[Xuriel]

When you say you checked and found that Windows really did report that BV was not installed, I'm assuming you mean it's not listed in the Add Or Remove Programs control panel. Which means it's not in the registry. However, are the BV files actually missing from Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage?

The BV files were still in Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage and the expansion was still listed under Add or Remove Programs, but if I tried clicking on the remove button nothing would happen. I'm pretty sure that it's a registry problem, but can't pinpoint what triggers it, since it only happens with Bon Voyage and no other applications are ever affected  I thought that it might be something related to TS2 itself.

It can't be a Windows restore point issue because I installed everything in order and then patched before installing the next expansion, so Teen Style and Free Time were installed after BV and they stayed in place every time. It's definitely not SecuROM and I also ran virus scans and there's nothing in that regards.

Anyway, I reinstalled BV again and I'll keep close tabs in case that it happens again. I hadn't thought about it being a hard drive problem, so I'll check on that also. Thanks for the tip.

[talysman]

I thought you said that you checked and BV really was uninstalled? What did you check?

It sounds now like you just have a problem with it deleting vacation hoods. Is that correct? Or is the BV functionality disabled?

And just to verify, you aren't using the launcher, correct?

[Xuriel]

Every time this happened I got the notification that BV had been uninstalled after the game finishes loading in the Free Time screen. Clicking okay lets me continue to the Neighborhoods screen, but in any Neighborhood I enter the the icon for the BV subhoods is disabled, so there is no access to the vacation hoods and any BV vacation actions are no longer available.

Going back to the Programs Menu in Windows the expansion is no longer listed with the others under the EA Games menu. The files are still in the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES folder, but the game just doesn't recognize them as being there. I don't use the launcher, I boot the game from a shortcut linked to a No-CD exe.

Like I mentioned before, I just reinstalled BV and Free Time. I have checked the Registry for errors and I can't find any system problems, so I'll run the game for the next few days and see if things run okay this time.

[cwykes]

I've used a registry cleaner before now - PCtools Registry Doctor.  There's a DL of it with only partial functionality.  My son told me after registry cleaners were "a bad thing"  so I'm not sure whether to recommend trying that or not....

[witch]

Try the Crap Cleaner or ERUNT, a registry backup and restore utility and NTREGOPT, a registry optimiser.

I've used both with good results.

[cwykes]

If the registry cleaner is a new addition to crap cleaner, that's the one that borked my sims installation.  I had to do a system restore after trying it.  I guess it's updated by now - I haven't been back.  I didn't get on with crap cleaner anyway - I've got a PC with 3 user IDs and it wasn't set up to find the crap on all the accounts for me.  Try one of the others.

[tabbs]

I'm actually currently having this problem but with FT. I installed AL and then FreeTime when bye bye. So now I'm trying to intall FT, and can't get my second disk to run - I put the disk in when I'm prompted to and then it just hangs at 54% without responding... I'm not sure how to fix this.