Was it the cemetery lot, by any chance? I have that problem, too, but so far only on Gothier Green Lawns, and it doesn't matter whether Sims take a Taxi there, or drive their own cars.

I've had blank want icons too, but only with college graduates. In fact, out of six graduates, only one still has his six want slots and two locks. They are all permanent platinum, so I don't mind the loss of the slots all that much. Four of the six got icons back after a couple of days of gameplay and haven't had a problem since (it could have been the same want that eventually expired) and two of them I haven't really played much but they seem to be the worst about it, only showing the want that I locked and never rolling up new wants that display.
I wanted to do the fix where you extract an object file from your disk, but for that fix you used the University disk, and I can't find the same file on the Nightlife one. I'm worried about using the University one, so I think that family will sit it out for the patch.

Yeah It doesn't appear that the nightlife disc has an object.package file, if there is one, I can not find it either. I did try replacing the one that is in the UNI, as before NL came out, but it didn't correct the problem nor has it affected anything else.
So I guess until a patch comes out, or JM can figure it out, we are all just stuck.

I have had this problem with a few sims when moving them into a new house.  They were sims I had upgraded using the lot debugger.  It wouldn't work on them again, so I added the slots and locks back with the Insimenator.  I then used the aspiration adjuster to refresh their wants, and I either got them to achieve a want if it was quick and easy, such as talking to a family member, or I used boolprop to trigger small wants.  After a few rounds of this, they were soon back to "normal."  I didn't notice any more problems with them.  If you want to try InSim, the site says that the OBJ version works with Nightlife, and Eric is working on updating the other versions this weekend.

It's on Nightlife's Disk 2.

This started happening to me after playing a while. Since I was testing mods, I thought maybe one of them triggered it. I took out downloads entirely, but the problem wasn't solved. I tried generating a whole new Sims 2 folder in Documents/EA Games (by removing the old Sims 2 folder and starting the game up, forcing the generation of a new folder) and that didn't work. So it wasn't a corrupted Groups cache. Whatever had gone wrong had happened in the Programs/EA Games folder -- the main game install.

So, after making a back up,  I uninstalled and then reinstalled just the NightLife expansion. That fixed the problem. So I reinstalled the CEP and put my centerpiece fireplace back in the Programs/EA folder. Still worked fine, and has continued to work through a lot of game play.

Since I did have a few mods at the time of the problem, that I found out later were not recommended (Carrigon had already said they were not good for NightLife, but I just hadn't checked her site yet), I am still not sure that the problem would have started without mods in the game.

I am waiting to see if the game corrupts again, with only NightLife approved mods.

It may even be something as simple as having moved an older preNightLife neighborhood backup into the new game -- long after installation. I had done that at the time, also. Perhaps NightLife has to be installed over older neighborhoods, rather than just bringing them in. Shrug.

At any rate, if just an expansion reinstall works, without changing anything else, it is a simple and easy fix -- even if it turns out to be a Maxis glitch causing it. I saved a copy of the newly reinstalled Program/EA Games folder, after I had reinstalled the CEP and placed the centerpiece fireplace in it. If it happens again, I might try only changing that out. It would be even a simpler fix, it if works.

That's what I've done in my game. There was a thread around here recently where someone asked MaxoidTom that and he said that was perfectly safe to do and should prevent any corruption problems with that file since nothing in that file is supposed to be modified after the game is installed.

*edit: I found the post

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=718.msg25924;topicseen#msg25924

I just had an issue with the RC car.  One of my frat boys was throwing a graduation party, and one of the other frat members went to campus and brought back that stupid car.  I didn't notice until I saw the icon in his queue where he was playing with it.  I canceled it so I could get rid of it, but when I clicked on the icon, I got a message that an error had occurred in the Party controller.  (I play with testing cheats enabled.)  After a moment, the party scoring box went away, and my YA never graduated and grew up.  He had the option to throw another party, but it never started the scoring scenario, so since I had saved my game right before the party, I exited without saving and started over.  I have started saving right before a party because of problems like this.  This time the guy brought an old armchair from campus, and the party went without a hitch.  I had some wedding parties back before I installed Uni that seemed to have gotten "lost" because I didn't have the scoring box and they never got a memory of a great wedding party or the limo.  I didn't have testing cheats on then, so I figure there must have been a similar error that crashed the party controller, but I didn't know about it.

No, my graphics card isn't all that great, it just barely runs the game I think.     Only students in a Greek fraternity/sorority house will do this though, not dorms or non-greek houses.

Sims living in a greek house wander off to "visit campus" a lot, usually bringing back pizza, but sometimes other objects.  The whole concept of them bringing back a remote control car and me not catching it is enough to put me off playing greek houses forever.

Hook

I like Greek houses because for one thing they don't have to sleep nearly as much.  They can probably go a couple of days without sleep.  Mine are all level 6 houses because everyone is friends with everybody.  They usually bring back chairs and those spindle end tables that I use to store thinking caps which are good for a few bucks.  They rarely bring the RC car, but this was one of those times.  I save and back up my games obsessively because of various reasons.

Quite true. All we need is some empty beer bottles, piles of dirty clothes, and a few supermodel posters and it'll be perfect.