Deleted Maxis Recolors Appearing in Game as flashing blue

[Magicmoon]

I downloaded several recolors of the cheapest wood bookcase a long time ago. They might have been recolors that were done with one of the early versions of CEP, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I deleted the recolors from within the game. But now when I load the game, those recolors show up as flashing blue with the Sensible study bookcase by Inge. (That bookcase picks up on recolors of the original it was cloned from). They have disappeared from the regular bookcase's recolors and no longer have the little trashcan delete icon available when clicked on from Inge's bookcase.

I turned on testingcheats to get the name of the offending files. They all start with Squirt followed by the color name. However, when I do a search of my download folder, I can't find any files by these names still in there.

How do I get rid of these flashing blue recolors?

[Ellatrue]

Is it even possible to delete recolors from within the game anymore?

[moonluck]

To delete recolors in the game post patch 2 is pretty simple. All you have to do is place the object and then get the recolor tool and delete the recolors from there.

I have no idea why Inge's bookcase is doing that though. Maybe delete the groups cashe.

[Magicmoon]

I've deleted the cache several times since the problem began. That was one of my first thoughts. As far as using the recolor tool, it won't work because after I deleted the colors from within the game, the delete icon is now missing for those recolors.

Is it even possible to delete recolors from within the game anymore?

I only have up to Nightlife. Are you saying you can't delete recolors from within the game after OFB?

[RainbowTigress]

This was Maxis way of fixing a problem, starting with one of the OFB patches.  I believe it was a fix for uniforms disappearing from the game when planning uniforms?  I'm not sure because I never experienced the problem, but all EPs going forward will have this "fix."

[cwykes]

I only have up to Nightlife. Are you saying you can't delete recolors from within the game after OFB?

I've got OFB and I've been deleting recolours using this method.  Most delete fine.  I've had a problem with a few that are attached to something else like countertops that only work with one counterbase.  I don't see how a bookcase recolour could be attached to something else - unless it's sharing something with a matching table....  I guess they are from simsquirts by the filenames - you could revisit the site and see what else was in the set.

I'm just wondering if the recolours have ended up with one of those names that's just a long string of numbers.   If you downloaded them again, Cleaninstaller would spot if they had duplicates somewhere.

[IgnorantBliss]

Try deleting your thumbnails and see if that helps. Delete the package files in the Thumbnails folder (under the Sims 2 folder in My Documents). Start up the game and see if the blue thumbnails are still there.

[Magicmoon]

That sounds very logical! Ok. There are 5 in there. I had to delete CAS thumbnails once and it seems like it took forever to rebuild it, so I just want to delete the one that affects the objects.

CANHObjectsThumbnails.package
ObjectThumbnails.package
DesignModeThumbnails.package
BuildModeThumbnails.package
CASThumbnails.package

Ok. So it's not the last 2. Which of the first 3 do you think will work?

[IgnorantBliss]

Try deleting the second and third one on the list, they are both for objects. The first one on the list is for neighborhood objects, so that's not it. It might be enough to only delete the DesignModeThumbnails.package, because I think that's the one for color options, but there is no harm in deleting them both.

[Magicmoon]

Darn, I was really hoping that would work! I deleted the two middle files with no difference in those stupid blue, blinking recolors.

Now I'm completely out of ideas.

[SaraMK]

I think I remember someone else having this problem because the files they deleted were set to read-only and so were not really deleted. But it's all very vague in my mind so I could be mistaken.

Try selecting your entire Downloads folder, remove read-only from all files inside it, and then see if you can then delete the flashing blue recolors.

[Magicmoon]

I made all the files read only, but then I realized there is still no way to delete what I need. I got the names of the offending files by turning on testingcheats and then mousing over the blue icons. Then I did a search of the download folder for the offending files and they weren't there.

I'm going to try one more thing. I'll take the sensible bookcases out of the game, load the game, then put them back in and reload. Maybe that will reset whatever type of hidden cache has them. I've deleted the cache and thumbnails already, so I don't know where this info is being stored, unless it is being stored in the item itself. I don't even know if items can do that or not.

It takes my game 20 minutes to load, so I'm not looking forward to this double load time just to find out that those stupid blue flashing things are still around.

[RainbowTigress]

If you take everything out and then move back only what you know you need a little at a time, it shouldn't take as long to load until you get back close to as much as you had before.

[Magicmoon]

I've deleted the cache and thumbnails already, so I don't know where this info is being stored, unless it is being stored in the item itself. I don't even know if items can do that or not.

I *think* I solved the problem. After I wrote the above I started thinking. Could it be stored in an object? I don't know much about SimPE, but I loaded in the sensible bookcase file and started poking around (after backing up of course).

In the material definitions there were several colors listed, and among them was the weird file names that I couldn't find in my downloads folder. I deleted those definitions. Hopefully when I load the game back in, all will be well. If not, since I now know where the info was being stored, I can redownload the bookcase and I should be able to get the original back without all the flashing blue icons.

Thanks for everyone that answered and helped. Yes, even things that don't work help because it gets me to thinking. I'm too tired to test it right now, but hopefully the problem will now be solved.

Edit: Problem Solved