"grab hand" in Sims 3 glitching

[coaimhe]

Several times while playing, I have switched to build/buy mode and had this issue.  The hand icon stays in the "grabbed" position, and I cannot place or remove items.  Has this happened to anyone else, and is there a fix?  This is not a continuous problem, just often enough to be annoying.

[Process Denied]

I had that happen when using the household inventory.  In trying to make it let go, I ended up having 4 things stuck in the hand.  I don't know what is causing it.  I also had a family get their information stuck.  I would click on the girl and it would have her husband's picture and info but the query was hers.  Thank goodness it happened with only one hour left of vacation.  It was fixed when they got home.  I mention this because it seemed like the same problem--sticky controls.

[coaimhe]

I forgot to mention that when I switch to the decorative tool, the icon stays a "clenched" hand, and then the game locks up. It is quite frustrating. I do not have any mods or cc.

[Sammy]

Discovered the same issue for myself today. I had an easel stuck in the "handgrab" and I couldn't figure out to get rid of it. Very frustrating. It started when I was taking things out of the family inventory after the household moved to another house.

[ShortyBoo]

I've had the same problem. Mostly when dealing with the inventory, but I've had it happen in CASt too. Twice it got so bad that I had to exit the game without saving because Live mode wouldn't select.

[KawaiiMiyo]

I've had this problem, but instead of the hand being "Clenched" it stays in the open position when I switch to live mode. So that when I tell my sim to interact with an object (i.e. a radio) I only have the grab hand open, and since its unable to "Pick up" the radio while in live mode, nothing happens, and my sim remains unable to use it.

[Marq]

I've also experienced this issue.  I searched to see if there was a solution but I haven't come across anything yet.

[alaira]

I've had the same issue without cc.  Luckily, saving and reloading the game doesn't bring back the bug.  But still, very annoying.

[ElviraGoth]

I was having the "clenched hand" problem, too.  Don't know why, but I tried going into edit town mode and then back into the game and I haven't seen it happen again.  That doesn't mean it WON'T happen again, or that switching to edit town mode will help, but it did that time.  You might want to try it.

[Tomkat]

I also had this issue, specifically when trying to move artifacts out of the family inventory when I moved them to a new house.
Obviously - new house, new decor, so having a stuck hand icon pretty much screwed them up.

The only way I ended up actually placing anything was by using the moveobjects on cheat.

Havent had the problem since, so I dont know the solution or real cause.
I havent since been back to that household either, so Im assuming that if its still an issue it must be household specific.

[Kidzth]

From my experiment, I think it is the same problem as someone unable to feed omniplants due to excessive inventories. In my case, I tried deleting two of my bookcases that were full of novels written by household sims. Once I finished getting rid of them, the problem did not persist.

[KawaiiMiyo]

From my experiment, I think it is the same problem as someone unable to feed omniplants due to excessive inventories. In my case, I tried deleting two of my bookcases that were full of novels written by household sims. Once I finished getting rid of them, the problem did not persist.

     This would make sense, and I think I agree. While playing last night, after hours of collecting, harvesting and fishing,on all the sims in the household, Their inventories got rather full, and it was hard to keep track of things. In an attempt to "Organize" I thought I'd just put everything all together on one sim, so like items can group together. It was at this point I got that clenched fist while trying to move things around. Tried switching to buy/build mode same thing. Rotating the camera stopped the problem long enough to grab something, but then it'd pop up again.
     Frusterated, I decided to "sell/refine" everything in that sims inventory. Then saved and came back in, and I haven't had the problem again.

[Sammy]

The thought makes sense, except I had the problem after pulling things out of the family inventory and there only had to be maybe twelve objects in there. My sims' inventories weren't excessively full, either. :/

[Process Denied]

Mine was in the family inventory and there was only that object-the nectar machine.  I had successfully taken it out of another families' inventory-so I don't think it is a certain object either.

[sewinglady]

Well most of my problems with grabbing/moving/rendering items began when I installed a basement on my lot. I have also long suspected that most of my problems are because I'm playing the largest buildable lot available in Sunset Valley and the house and garden, etc. is all just huge so there's lots and lots of 'stuff' and the game just can't deal all that well with that much 'stuff'. And no that's not technical speak...

[J. M. Pescado]

The game has some real-time race condition problems that can result if you overload the computer. Whereas a game that encounters inadequate machinery for real-time processing normally simply gives up being real-time and starts lagging, but works, TS3 is, in many places, specifically programmed to cut corners and thus fail out in bizarre and inexplicable ways rather than giving up real-time behavior. The resulting compromise ends up being unsatisfying to everyone, as the game doesn't function correctly and it's still not real-time.

[Noenmity]

I often have to deal with this issue and the way I usually get out of it which works pretty much all the time is click delete which sells the item I have in hand. If grab is stuck with an object I don't want to delete, I'll grab another object I don't care about and delete that which usually releases grab after that.
Not sure but if this is important or not but I usually have the sims inventory open for that since you can sell from that window. And as for build/buy I don't think it matters as you can sell from any window in those modes, right?

[Kidzth]

That makes a lot of sense, Mr. President.

Still, I would hypothesize that the game counts lot items as a whole so when the number of objects exceed the limit the program can handle, the shit hits the fan. But again, I am too frightened by the recent horrors that I doubt I would bother testing for the result.

[ShortyBoo]

I had this happen with a Sim's Inventory.  It let me drag out the objects but left a 'ghost' of the object in the Inventory.  The end result is I now have three items stuck in her Inventory that I can do nothing with.  If you hover over them it gives the correct information, but I can't click or drag them so they will be in her Inventory forever!

I had that happen. I saved and quit the game and the next time I restarted, everything was still in the inventory and I was able to remove it. I guess the items I was able to take out of the inventory were the "ghost objects" because they weren't where I placed them before quitting, but were instead in the family inventory.

[Rhumba]

That makes a lot of sense, Mr. President.

Still, I would hypothesize that the game counts lot items as a whole so when the number of objects exceed the limit the program can handle, the shit hits the fan. But again, I am too frightened by the recent horrors that I doubt I would bother testing for the result.

If this is the case, then the food replicator tipped the scales for me today.

I had never encountered the issue before. I had a sim (pre-made, McDermott from Riverview) get his LTW and I picked up the food replicator with the points. All was well until I placed it, then tried to recolor it in buy mode.  The grab hand got a bad case of arthritis, then the game seemed to lock up.

It was just the mouse/interface not responding correctly, however. The keyboard shortcuts all still worked, and the grab-fist could be used to click, after a fashion. Couldn't return to live mode until I changed floors, clicked build mode, then clicked live mode.

The fist continued on in live mode where it prevents me from selecting anything in inventory and is just generally irritating.  I was only able to sell produce through the sell interface in the supermarket.

I'm not running hacks, awesome or otherwise, just have Store items that were arred and a small amount of custom content. I'll try selling more produce from the other family members inventories to see if it corrects the issue.

[BattyCoda]

Have any of you tried hitting Escape when this happens?

[Gastfyr]

I have been having this problem and it keeps comming back.  I closed and re-opened the game and that "fixed" it for a little bit until it got stuck again.  I also went back to main menu and came back in and that worked once, but when I tried the same thing again when the grab hand got stuck again, it was stil broken when I came back in to my lot.

I am also playing on the largest SV lot.  My sims had been sleeping in a tent with a small shower/toilet outhouse, a fridge/counter/stove out door kitchen, and a one-sprinkler sized garden.  I had decided it was time to build them thier dream house since the mrs was expecting their first child, so I stuck pretty nearly everything in fam inv and prodeded to build them a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom mansion with a massive basement and a large courtyard.  It was when I had started taking items back out of fam inv to furnish thier new house that the grab hand started glitching.  It would look like I'd placed the item, for exaple the crib, but the crib would still be showing in the fam inv as well.

I actually managed to get everything out of the fav inv to the point where it wasn't showing in the fam inv anymore, but I neglected to save before I started placing some of thier relics that had been stored in the treasure chest.  That was a bad idea.  The vases, bouls, etc that I had already placed litterally started dissappearing!  They weren't in either sim's inv, the fam inv, or the treasure chest.  I quit without saving and havn't tried loading the game up since (this was late last night, and I just went to bed). another example of intentional coding? When the total itmes gets too much, simply start deleting some at random?  nice.

[Rhumba]

Have any of you tried hitting Escape when this happens?

I did. Actually I tried every key on the keyboard because I wanted to save and bail out, but since I was locked into buy mode, the save function was not available.

Esc didn't help.  The grab-fist would briefly disappear if I right clicked instead of left clicked, but the moment I tried to do something else, it went back into a fist.

I am playing a pretty big lot containing a house, converted barn, a shed and two farm fields plus a pond.  Since most of the adults were in on the gardening, there was a lot of groceries in four sims' inventories. I sold about §13k in groceries and fish at the store, saved and left the game.

Today my grab hand is just a grab hand. I sold more groceries, threw some in the fridge and it has not yet reoccurred, but perhaps it's not long enough to tell.

I have to replace the fridges on the lot anyway every time I load the game to stop it from allowing food to spoil overnight. 

That seemed to start right after I installed the last pre-WA patch.

[Erry]

I managed to somewhat fix this with deleting a bad file, at least I think it's a bad file, since ProcMon showed that it was being loaded over and over.

[coconnor]

Yes, I have experienced this as well.  The hand becomes a clenched fist and it's difficult to get it to let go of the imaginary object ~ either by using the ESC key, or by right or left clicking.  I tried it all.  Eventually I was able to get back to live mode.  But it's a pain!