entire game broken?

[hell_e]

My mothers neighbourhood seems borked: blank want/fear/lifetimewants slots all blank. With testingcheatsenabled it keeps rolling errors related to wants... I attached one of them... hope it's the right one

Already tried:
Used backup from a week ago - no good
Moved the entire downloadsfolder out - no good
Deleted the entire ea / sims 2 folder to let it generate a new  - no good
Uninstalled / reinstalled M&G - no good

Do I need to reinstall everything for her, and why is it happening all at once?

[jolrei]

Is it the neighbourhood or the game that is borked?

You said you tried using a backed up version of the 'hood, but that this did not work.  What happens if you create a new custom 'hood?  Does the new hood function normally?  If so, your game is fine, and you mother's hood is the problem.

[phyllis_p]

Did you try the back-up with and without downloads?  Or did you only try the current version without downloads?

[hell_e]

jolrei: I did try a new custum hood with no cc in it - problem remained, tried both with and without cc. That's when I deleted the whole ea/sims 2 folder to let it generate the maxis neighbourhoods from scratch - problem still there. I didn't try making a new custom hood afterwards, but if the maxis are screwed, a custom hood would be too I think?

phyllis_p: First I pulled all the downloads to see if the problem remained, then I put in the backup with downloads since it worked fine a week ago (when I actually took the backup), problem remained. Then I deleted all the downloads, problem remained. Went back into the gamefolders and delted lorddarcys files from the gamefolders, the ones that gives higher rating to beds and showers, just in case that was the culprit, didn't solve anything.

The only thing left at this point are the empty neighbourhood templates, could they go corrupt?

No lifetime wants/icons - same in cas and in-game
Blank wants/fears + wants related errors

[jolrei]

See this thread: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4580.0.html

From what you have described, if you have done everything that you say you have, there may be some sort of data file corruption.  The thread contains a number of suggestions you might try, prior to uninstalling and reinstalling the game.

Have you deleted groups.cache and let it regenerate?  If it is set to read-only and you recently installed an EP, this could be the problem.

Have you fixed and nuked everything in sight using the lot debugger recently?

[hell_e]

jolrei: I have taught her to delete the accessories and groups cache cheat everytime she exits the game... can't remember if I actually deleted after uninstalling/reinstalling M&G.. will try that. Did nuke/fix everything on the lot debugger as one of the first things - also no dice.

I've skimmed the linked thread, but I'm still clueless as to deleting only dangling swafs, and considering her neighbourhood is highly populated, it's probably gonna be more timeconsuming, than just reinstalling... provided there are any dangling swafs anyway. It's not as though she really wants to keep that neighbourhood, right now she'll be happy to have any working neighbourhood.

So I'm gonna head off to her, start a fresh custom neighbourhood, with all the noregen hacks in + empty templates, make sure to delete the groups.cache and look in sim-pe for any swafs and delete those if there are any - and if this fails I guess I'm going to be spending the weekend uninstalling/reinstalling everything for her...