Trouble with loading
mildlydisguised:
I've just recently reinstalled my game (base, Uni, NL and OFB) after a problem with my laptop, unrelated to the Sims. I now have a slight annoyance with the startup, there seems to be about a 3 -5 minute gap between the EA games screen and the Maxis icon screen. This never happened before as it would always go straight between the screens in a matter of seconds. There are no other problems when I reach the startup movie and loading screen as these load as quickly as before. If I tab out of the process during the 3-5 minutes of blankness it then refuses to load and task manager tells me the program is not responding. I have installed the OFB patch (the latest one) but that didn't seem to help matters.
Has anyone else had this problem? Or anyone any ideas on how to fix it? Any advice would be much appreciated as I'm am getting irritated with it's lack of awesomeness ???
jrd:
Sounds like the CD check. Get Daemon and a mini-image. This shaves a lot of cycles of the startup routine.
You can also try to disable the movies, they're useless anyway and waste startup time: TS2\TSData\Res\Movies --> rename the .movie files to .movie.off. Do the same for the logos found in the other XP installs (NL has a new one, and so do the shopping packs).
mildlydisguised:
Thanks for your help Jordi. I think I'm having a bit of a problem mounting the mini-image with Daemon. I've followed this tute http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=131341 but now if I try starting OFB through the start menu or the icon on my desktop it asks for the disc. I did manage to start it the first time as I'd left the disc in the drive but quickly ejected it just after I had doubled clicked my desktop icon, and it carried on loading. However I did notice that the original problem of the unawesome 3 minutes of blankness was still there. I had previously renamed the movie files as suggested.
Any further suggestions re the mounting? As to be honest I do like the idea of not having to have the latest disc with me everytime i want to play Sims, regardless of whether it solves the blankness problem (which doesn't look likely). Also anyone any idea why I'm getting the blankness if unrelated to the CD check?
Thanks
jrd:
Sorry, forgot to mention that for OFB you also need a disk hider utility.
Google for SD4hide, or use the Securom Loader (or ASR) from this page. Since ASR can be done by amending the shortcut and does not require further manual action I much prefer it.
If you remove all your downloads, does the game also take 3/4 minutes to load? If not, it may be that you simply have too many downloads. Try cleaning some.
Especially custom meshes can cause delays.
mildlydisguised:
No problem, but should I be copying the asr.exe file to D:/Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2 Open for Business/TSBin? (I'm going by the following instructions)
Copy AntiSecuROM.exe and AntiSecuROM.dll (the AntiSecuROM.dll only exist if you are using SecuROM Loader 1.1, version 1.2 generates a dll file when it is started, so if you are using SecuROM Loader 1.2 the only thing you need to copy is the asr.exe file) to the directory where the protected EXE file is located.
Create a desktop shortcut to the AntiSecuROM.exe you just copied (right click on it, select send to -> Desktop)
Right click your new desktop shortcut and select properties. In the target field, add this : -r followed by the name of the game's EXE file. Example : for Star Wars Empire at War it will look something like this : "C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Empire at War\GameData\AntiSecuROM.exe" -r sweaw.exe
Now click ‘Change Icon' and browse to the game's EXE file to get the icon from it and then click OK.
That's it! Now all you need to do to run your game is mount the image in Daemon Tools, cancel the autorun screen and double click your desktop shortcut.
Also do I need to delete the original asr.exe file from my desktop (as a result of extracting the rar file on my desktop) as there will be a shortcut there instead? Sorry I'm a bit technically challenged so I thought I'd ask to make sure!
Also regarding the downloads, because I had to reinstall everything on my laptop, I lost all my previous downloads for the game (mental note to self - backup in future). I had to start collecting afresh so the first time I ran the game, the beginning of the age of 3 minutes of blankness, I only had the most critical MATY hacks in there. Although I have been collecting more downloads recently, the folder is still only currenly 441MB, majority of those hacks. Pre-system reinstall, I must have had at least a gig of downloads. However I do have a lot of hair meshes from XMsims so I will try taking it out and seeing if that makes a difference.
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