Sims2EPNoCD suddenly stopped launching...

[stompintom]

...after about 2 months of successful, near-daily sims play. Last successful play session was last night.

Hello, MATYians. First-time poster. I know that you guys are delighted when first-time posters start new threads, so I thickened my skin accordingly. Only reason I'm posting now is that I have a question that no amount of searching - either on this board or on Google -  has answered.

I have (in my tech files at home) nearly every 'no-crack' post from this site and have reviewed them all thru this morning: not a scintilla of information to be found. So I desperately start a new speshul thread on MATY, not wanting to necromance the dead no-cd threads on here, in an appeal to anyone else who has heard of this problem, or even Pescado Himself. Here are the facts:

- Sims 2 game installed, all SPs, all EPs, lo these last few years. Downloaded a few custom skins last night, played successfully. (Custom skins by non-controversial creators, Enayla, Pixys, Bosie, all uploads several months old from GOS.)
- Closed out of game, kept computer running all night.
- In morning opened SimPE, looked at a couple of my newly-downloaded skins, made no changes, closed SimPE w/o saving. (I have opened SimPE only once before, weeks ago, and that too was only to look. I have never used it.)
- Double-clicked my handydandy no-cd shortcut button, just as I have for the last couple months since I installed it, including last night. But this time I got an error box, NO text message, just a "The Sims 2" header and a big red X button in the box, and the "OK" button. Hit "OK" and the box closed.
- Restarted the computer. Double-clicked the no-cd shortcut. Same empty error box.
- Attempted to launch from the M&G TSBin application exe file itself. Same empty error box.
- My computer has not been online since I bought it in December, and is not even connected to the internet. Trend Antivirus is installed, but is never turned on.
- My crack has worked fine for me since early March, and was downloaded from MATY, morriganrant's post here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9929.900.html

I am loathe to launch from the disk, just b/c I don't want to go thru the whole SecuROM routine again. I am not technically proficient; just love to play the Sims 2. Pescado or other MATYians, can you give me a clue as to where to look for an answer to what has borked my game, and how to un-bork? Knowing Pescado's love of small children, I promise NOT to name my first-born after you if you help me out now.

Coming into yet ANOTHER morning like this, I will perhaps add another family to my small bankster Purgatorio nabe (where the babby-roaster is in high demand), to create and purge (yet another) EA-themed family, in honour of constantly having to circumvent their attempts to prevent me from playing my legally-bought game. That's if anyone has heard of this problem before, how it was solved, and can help me get my game back...?

[Sunbee]

Did you delete the cache files?  Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2  You should see two of them, groups and accessory, if you haven't already deleted them.

[stompintom]

Hey, Sunbee, yes I did. Always do before opening the game.

Sorry, should have put that in my first post. Not being much of a tekkie, I'm never sure what's relevant information.

[stompintom]

Everything working fine again. My tekkie friend said it was obvious that a game file had become corrupt, and so he replaced the game files (but NOT the downloads file) from my backup and now the game has started up fine. There are some questions that I guess aren't worth trying to find the answers for as long as a backup will still work.

Apologies to all for opening a thread that after all, became superfluous. I still don't know what the answer was but I have learned a few things which I'll put here in case anyone else has a question like this:

1) Always always keep backups!

2) There is NOTHING wrong with the crack posted by morriganrant, which works just fine when not having to deal with a corrupt game file.

3) If anyone else sees an empty error box come up that prevents the game from launching, AND if the cache is clear, I guess it means that one of your game files is corrupt. Easiest thing to do after that I guess is just replace them from an older backup. But you don't have to ditch your downloads. I was most worried about the downloads file and he said (if I can remember) that a blank error box RIGHT at startup means it's something running at the start that's throwing errors (before the downloads load up). So my downloads file is still intact.

So now this thread is just a little information on what to do, I guess, if you get a blank error box right at startup, with a clear cache and running from a crack. Sorry if I wasted anyone's time by posting my question only to have it fixed later. I thought I'd post the result just b/c I have gotten so much from this site over the years, and wanted to increase the information on it even if in a small way, and so that morriganrant's crack didn't get slandered by my original question!

Back to lurking, now...

[jezzer]

You should probably review MATY's stance on double-posting while you lurk.

[stompintom]

OK, sorry. I forgot but noted for next time.