90% of Sunset Valley lots gone after returning from vacation.

[Inge]

Khate, you had cc in before didn't you?  Then you took it out after you got blue lots?

[aspinL]

4.) Interesting titbit but possibly a red herring, since I could be very wrong: I seem to remember that at first it was only the Museum of Art that was affected. I zoomed in, went huh?, and after I saved my game most of the lots in my hood were affected. Now I could be remembering it wrong (although I don't think so), but could this maybe have something to do with the "riddler fix" that the patch was supposed to do? When I get back home I'll test that and report back.

I just loaded up an old save from before the 1.7 patch. First thing I noticed was my sims' icons weren't on the left side all lined in a row of 8. All the needs were full green(though no sims to have needs), no lifetime wish, no moodlets, no trace of living sims. So obviously my game was fubar. And as with the above quote I went to map view and the art museum was blue lot and the goth house was blue lot. The negihborhood was Sunset Valley. Which last time I played with said game, both the goth house and art museum were completely covered in riddler tiles. Now since some people are saying they have blue lots with no cc, I am a little inclined to believe the blue lots are in fact EA's fault. Not to mention I have been playing with a new neighborhood started after WA was installed and have gona on vacation and haven't got a blue lot.

[Kkate]

Khate, you had cc in before didn't you?  Then you took it out after you got blue lots?

Nope. I had blue lots with CC in game. So I just uninstalled WA and base game, deleted all EA  folder (from Documents AND //:C) Install game and EP1 again, patched, played a few days and one day, after my Sim returned from Egypt, there were blue lots in Sunset Valley. Someone noticed EA staff about this problem, but they also aren´t sure what causes it 

[mizzroyalty]

I think i found a possible solution to the blue lots problem.

Apparently this is a problem is affecting pc's especially one's using Vista because i myself own a macbook and never had this problem. Anyways here's what i noticed....

To get the game to work if its already experiencing blue lots
1. Delete the saved game folder (yes you'll lose any lots and families in the neighbourhood so if you could package these, do so)
2. Hold the windows flag key and hit R  (The "Run" box will appear)
3. Type misconfig and click continue
4. A system configuration window will appear
5. Click the startup TAB (not the start up in the General Tab)
6. Click Disable ALL then click apply
7. Click the Services TAB, YOU MUST CLICK "Hide All microsoft sevices" option at the bottom (You'll See a Check mark in the box)
8. THEN click disable all (the disable all option would be faded out after you click it)
9. Click Apply
10. Restart the computer for the effects to take place

At this point your game would work perfectly.

Now this is what i noticed, the game would work fine because i started and quit the game about 10 times without the blue lots occurring, even after visiting the world locations
What i did notice however is when you turn off or restart the computer the blue lots would come back.
SO every time you restart or turn off the computer you must do steps 1 -10 mentioned above. If you are like me and never turn off you laptop but only make it sleep you are fine because the settings are saved and only reset when you take the pc off or restart the pc.

So Long story short do step 1-10 if you take the pc off or restart BEFORE opening the game other wise the blue lots would come back so i stress... Do steps 1-10 BEFORE opening the game. Hopefully by now the system configuration is pinned to your start menu to elimate steps 1-4. You know if the settings are saved because in the Start up tab would have noting checked off and the systems tab would have disable all faded out.

Good Luck Guys.... I wish you luck
 

[Sigmund]

Apparently this is a problem is affecting pc's especially one's using Vista because i myself own a macbook and never had this problem. Anyways here's what i noticed....

Nope. I'm playing mine on a Macbook under OSX and I've gotten blue lots.

[Inge]

Mizzroyalty, presumably you mean after deleting the CC that originally caused the blue lots?

[nanacake]

What i did notice however is when you turn off or restart the computer the blue lots would come back.

That's because what you're suggesting is pure voodoo in connection to the blue lots. MSCONFIG is for diagnostic startup and while turning off services/startup not in use can help your game performance, turning off certain services your computer needs will cause some computers to not function correctly. It's not the permanent way to turn off services/startup so that's why when you restart they open again. But this experiment kind of tells me it's correct what Inge said about blue lots being connected to bad loading process. You probably have too many services running to have enough CPU/RAM to load your game properly - resulting in lot corruption.

It's better to adjust your startup services through services.msc. I don't think peasants should try this if they don't understand what it means. (Probably would end up disabling your printer, audio, who knows what else and not know how to fix it) http://theeldergeek.com has a nice service search to tell you what most common services do though and if it's safe or not to disable.

[Krib]

I think i found a possible solution to the blue lots problem.

Apparently this is a problem is affecting pc's especially one's using Vista because i myself own a macbook and never had this problem. Anyways here's what i noticed....

To get the game to work if its already experiencing blue lots
1. Delete the saved game folder (yes you'll lose any lots and families in the neighbourhood so if you could package these, do so)
2. Hold the windows flag key and hit R  (The "Run" box will appear)
3. Type misconfig and click continue
4. A system configuration window will appear
5. Click the startup TAB (not the start up in the General Tab)
6. Click Disable ALL then click apply
7. Click the Services TAB, YOU MUST CLICK "Hide All microsoft sevices" option at the bottom (You'll See a Check mark in the box)
8. THEN click disable all (the disable all option would be faded out after you click it)
9. Click Apply
10. Restart the computer for the effects to take place

At this point your game would work perfectly.

Now this is what i noticed, the game would work fine because i started and quit the game about 10 times without the blue lots occurring, even after visiting the world locations
What i did notice however is when you turn off or restart the computer the blue lots would come back.
SO every time you restart or turn off the computer you must do steps 1 -10 mentioned above. If you are like me and never turn off you laptop but only make it sleep you are fine because the settings are saved and only reset when you take the pc off or restart the pc.

So Long story short do step 1-10 if you take the pc off or restart BEFORE opening the game other wise the blue lots would come back so i stress... Do steps 1-10 BEFORE opening the game. Hopefully by now the system configuration is pinned to your start menu to elimate steps 1-4. You know if the settings are saved because in the Start up tab would have noting checked off and the systems tab would have disable all faded out.

Good Luck Guys.... I wish you luck
 

This is really poor advice. You're mistaking a unique situation with your machine for a fix for everyone. All you're saying they should do is disable all the non-microsoft services on their machines. But you don't even mention which one you were running. So what are you saying, "don't run any non-microsoft services and you won't get blue lots?" Sorry, but that's retarded.

[Inge]

If you have bluelots, tell the creators of your CC objects to read this thread: http://forums.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=381540

[socurious]

Inge, thanks for your part for figuring out that cc cloned from particular objects were causing the blue lots.  This information (and the information in the thread at MTS) was the only thing that helped eliminate the blue lots in my game. 

I'm always impressed with the responsiveness of modders and cc'ers in this community who respond to issues quickly, and do their best to resolve them. 

[goyahaslegs]

Like all of you I'm plagued with the blue lots and am trying all your suggestions. Maybe I missed something along the way but everyone seems to be having problems with their hoods in my case its not my towns they are fine its my vacation locations. I do have cc but removed the problem ones etc. I send a sim on holiday, they return home everything is OK my town functions well but when I send my sim back to the location its basically covered in blue lots both houses and community. I have not edited the vacation locations theres no cc at all. I have only used one sim and shes dressed in the WA stuff. China has been a real problem now France is blue lotting as well. There are only two or three local houses to be seen. Its bizaree because Sunset Valley and Riverview are fine. Does anyone else have a vacation problem but their hoods are fine? 

[Tingeling]

Like all of you I'm plagued with the blue lots and am trying all your suggestions. Maybe I missed something along the way but everyone seems to be having problems with their hoods in my case its not my towns they are fine its my vacation locations. I do have cc but removed the problem ones etc. I send a sim on holiday, they return home everything is OK my town functions well but when I send my sim back to the location its basically covered in blue lots both houses and community. I have not edited the vacation locations theres no cc at all. I have only used one sim and shes dressed in the WA stuff. China has been a real problem now France is blue lotting as well. There are only two or three local houses to be seen. Its bizaree because Sunset Valley and Riverview are fine. Does anyone else have a vacation problem but their hoods are fine? 

I had one save game do that yesterday, but I put it down to the fact that I had recently installed some fucked up cc. Upon removing the bad cc, the game was back to normal. I haven't had the time yet to send the sims on vacation a second time and check if the problem persists.

[mizzroyalty]

This is really poor advice. You're mistaking a unique situation with your machine for a fix for everyone. All you're saying they should do is disable all the non-microsoft services on their machines. But you don't even mention which one you were running. So what are you saying, "don't run any non-microsoft services and you won't get blue lots?" Sorry, but that's retarded.

Well that retarded advice came from the good folks at EA. My friend was having the problem and after doing it the blue lots have not returned to their pc.
As i said i do not experience this problem....... The only reason i took the time to post all of that here is to try and help, no one said it was correct and no one said to try it

[iHateyou]

Well that retarded advice came from the good folks at EA.

Well that makes it okay then! YAYAYAY!

[Slymenstra]

If your vacation lots are Blue Lotting there are some questions to answer.
1. Did you buy a vacation home and decorate it?
2. Did you edit any lots on vacation?

The best way to test is to take ALL of your packaged CC (the ones you install in the Mods folder) out. Create a whole new town and play the same way you were.  Edit things, change their hair, move people around, go on vacation.  Save and reload.  If no Blue lots appear then it is a piece of CC you have.

Not all CC has been listed everywhere that is bad.  You have to personally go through YOUR CC and find the culprits.  A helpful tip also is to look at the dates the files were created.  Anything before August, Sept, and Oct check first.

To check your CC you need to actually stick the CC on a lot and save.  Reload the hood and check.  Don't forget Windows and fireplaces.

And ALWAYS back up your saved games before playing with new CC.

[Sigmund]

Well that retarded advice came from the good folks at EA. My friend was having the problem and after doing it the blue lots have not returned to their pc.
As i said i do not experience this problem....... The only reason i took the time to post all of that here is to try and help, no one said it was correct and no one said to try it

Um, no, you came out and directly stated that following your steps will fix blue lots:

At this point your game would work perfectly.

EAxis is known for giving bad advice. If you're passing along advice from their "support" team, always mention that up front.

[goyahaslegs]

The weird thing about my vacation destinations is that all the community lots and locals houses are the blue lots. I never edited them in anyway. The vacation homes sims can buy are always fine. I did buy vacation houses and changed them around a bit but was careful with using no cc. Regardless, thank you slymenstra for the advice which I'll follow and see what happens.

[Tingeling]

Update on the blue lot issue:

After having done the hackdance today I tracked the culprit causing the blue lots in my hood down to this file: 0xd535a1c25e231c854401ac15e7ae1bb2.package
The funny thing is that it was one file from the Riverview bundle. That is, one of the files installed when installing the neighbourhood Riverview. Taking out that file removed the blue lot issue. I have yet to find out what it does to the game in terms of gamepley though. If anyone else does a search for the same file and it is corrupt, I suppose we can conclude that EA is a dipshit hoebag for not checking their own content before creating a patch.

BTW, for anyone who does not know where to find the file, check under My Documents/Electronic Arts/DCBackup, and only if you have installed Riverview.

Edit: Ok, so I sent a sim from a newly created game off to vacation. His home is located in Riverview and after removing the bad file, some glitches showed up. The sims names and houses looks like World/Riverview/Sims: Name/World Riverview Sims:Last Name for instance. I suppose that has something to do with the fact that a large part of the original file has been removed. Either way, Riverview is banned from my game for the time being. There were no blue lots to be found however, in China nor in Riverview. I only played for a few minutes, enough to check the blue lot issue, so I have no idéa what the long-term consequences are for deleting the file. 

[Inge]

Tingeling, please be aware that losing blue lots does not necessarily mean you are free of problem content.  The error in s3oc went across *all* content that contains a TXCT.  Even those that didn't cause bluelotting are/were broken and will almost certainly be a ticking timebomb.   Please check and fix *all* your custom game content.

[Tingeling]

Ha! Serves me right for not reading up thread. Ah well, best be off and fix those files then.