Game getting stuck while starting up

[Dbnguy]

I downloaded a few goodies, and having burnt my fingers before, I downloaded them into the downloads/new directory. (Once I test, I then move them into the appropriate directory for permanent residence)

The goodies I downloaded where: No friends for career hack, maid and aquarium fix as well as the gypsy find a mate crystal ball. (the ones listed for nightlife are the ones I downloaded) Before this I made a back up of my entire downloads directory (Yea I learn the lesson the VERY hard way).

I ran the game and it kept getting stuck on re-re-re reticulating spines, so the game wouldnt even load up.  I deleted the downloads, tested the game, and it still froze. I moved the backup back to the original dir, ran the game and voila........

IT FROZE !   

Now I know Im probably being REALLY optimistic here, but is there any program out there that will be able to identify the problem download? I downloaded the Delhi organiser, but this doesnt really tell much. Its supposed to tell me if I have duplicate downloads <which I do> yet when I run it, it picks up nothing.

I currently have the base game and nightlife. Can anyone offer help? The backup directory did work before, but now gets stuck on the SAME place.

Im about to upgrade my pc, but was really hoping to simply copy the downloads directory across, rather than having to re-install.
(Upgrade due to extermely bad performance on my existing PC, and extremely poor patience on the existing user )

Thanks in advance

Lee

[Arina]

If it worked before and with the same downloads it's not working, it must be a problem with one of the game files. Also, it seems to me that custom content is loaded in that pause between seeing the loading screen and the bar starting to move along.

I don't know what the problem is, but a lot of threads talk about the objects.package getting corrupted? If the ones on your pc have different modified dates to the ones on the cds then it might be corrupted. I don't know what else you should check because this hasn't happened to me.

Have you tried with the entire downloads folder moved out?

[Dbnguy]

Well Arina, at least I now know its not the game itself. removed the downloads folder and it started up... so I am now putting the download directories in one by one untill the game crashes again...

At least thats better than sivving thru 1 million and one downloads. Man I neer realised how these downloads slow the game startup. After removing the dir it took less than a minute to load... I kept reading posts about how some people have to sort thru thier directory of 2 GB downloads and I said, man I hope I never have to go there... Mine is currently sitting at 4000 files and 1.81 GB... Looks like downloading is a disease and we are ALL terminal cases :-)

Would still be nice if there was some kind of mini start up program that would go thru dl and let us know the bad ones. Would sure save alot of time (Hint Hint Hack makers  )

6 directories down, 500 to go

Lee

[Sagana]

Is re-re-re-reticulating splines a base game + NL only thing? For some reason, I thought that was a later startup screen.

First thing to do - try deleting the cache file and restarting. That fixes lots of stuck things when you've made changes in dls.

If that doesn't work and you hafta sort through your downloads, divide them in half - if you put in the first half and it crashes, but doesn't with the second half, then divide the first half in half. Continue dividing and checking until you've isolated the bad download. This is much quicker than sorting one by one (or probably even dir by dir depending on how you've got them set-up.)

I'd doubt it's any of those hacks, but I do know JM was trying to test NL only games because they aren't stable. If you can't get another EP, it'd probably be worth your while to get one of the more recent stuff-it packs, just to bring your game up to the more stable versions.

Oh, objects and lots created for/with EPs you don't have will cause the game to bork - including freezing, crashing and even bluescreening. Objects created with Pets really messed up my OFB-only game until I got Pets.

Bork Bork

[witch]

The Glamour Pack is touted as having a stable game engine. The cache file Sagana mentions is groups.cache and another I can never remember the name of.

[notveryawesome]

I'm just wondering how long the OP let the load-screen sit before deciding it was completely stuck. The loading screen will often stick at a particular place for an extended period of time, especially if you've recently downloaded a lot of custom content, but then it will go on and finish loading without a hitch. I give my load-time a good half hour before deciding that it's terminally stuck (normal load time for me is 5 to 7 minutes, depending on if I've recently deleted groups.cache or not). Deleting the groups.cache file would definitely be the first thing I'd try.