Loading Screen/Family Screen Problem

[fallenspades]

I reformatted my pc recently and reinstalled the game after a while. I had a backup of my neigborhood and downloads folder so I was able to play with the sims again after a few months of break. After creating new characters I searched on several forums for ways to improve framerate and ended up downgrading my nvidia graphics driver to 43.45.

Then I decided to update my OFB with the second patch, and update some hacks as well as d/ling new ones.

When I played the game and created a new character, I ended up with the character's portraid on the loading screen(which is abnormal by the way since you were supposed to see your sim posing instead of a large portrait on the loading screen.) Then the loading screens for cars are also corrupted, showing several screenshots instead of the car models.

Now I don't know what caused this, is it probably a hack? The graphics driver or the patch?

I recently downloaded the latest Insim, Inteen, Pescado's phonehack, releantwages, harderjobs-fix, bathroomusesyou, skillinator, localwalkby, macrotastics, customerselector, and restaurantandbar hack, along with squinge's swimpooltalk hack.

I updated with OFBp2, and the driver was nvidia 43.45.

Could any of these be causing these loading screen errors? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Jelenedra]

[fallenspades]

heheheh, thanks for the humor, I seriously needed that after cursing two hours straight because of frustration. Seriously though... what could be causing this?

[jsalemi]

heheheh, thanks for the humor, I seriously needed that after cursing two hours straight because of frustration. Seriously though... what could be causing this?

Well, that sounds like a really old nvidia driver -- I believe it was the 77.77 version (or around there) that was the last stable version with the sim, though some folks have reported success with the very newest ones.

But it also sounds like something got corrupted.  First thing to do is delete the 'groups.cache' file that you'll find in your /My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 folder.  That file caches a lot of dynamic game stuff, and is also prone to corruption -- lots of us have cleared up very odd problems just by deleting it and letting it rebuild (it'll do so next time you load the game).

If that doesn't work, you may have to delete the thumbnail files next, particularly the one for the neighborhood (make a backup first, just in case!).  Beyond that, you might need to reinstall the game, maybe.

[fallenspades]

Hmmm... I've done all of the following except updating my forceware driver, maybe I should move up to a higher version. Any good suggestions on a good driver? I have an old crappy geforce2 mmx400. So I just figured older drivers might work better.

[jrd]

For that card they will. Try finding a 5 series driver (Detonator 56.72 is the best one for a GF2 or 4MX).

[fallenspades]

After removing the old driver and using an omega driver (unofficial) 61.77, game runs even smoother now(at least by my card's standards.)

A lesson to learn indeed.