More Awesome Than You!

Recently, my sister, who plays on a limited account, has had lots crashing on the loading screen. It just sits there, loading for ages.

I took out her downloads folder, but they still crashed.

I took out her EA Games folder to make the game regenerate a new one, but they still crash.

I'm running Seasons, however I briefly had an Arrr version of Bon Voyage installed, but my PC couldn't run it so I uninstalled it. Before the installation I backed up all EA Games folders and replaced them after uninstalling Bon Voyage. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this was when the problem began.

Oh people more awesome than me, could I have some help?

Have you checked your Registry to make sure BV is properly uninstalled?

I have, and indeed it is completely gone from my system.

No matter anyway, since then I've just uninstalled everything and started from scratch. Pain in the arse reinstalling everything though.

Only too true!  It helps a bit if you have the DVD for the base game, though, but having to keep typing in all those codes drives me mad!  And they aren't exactly easy to read, are they?

I keep a notepad document with all my codes on it. Means I can copy-and-paste :)

Good idea, as long as you back it up somewhere safe.  (Just in case.....)

Still pain in the ass. I just reinstalled for the third time in three days (once because I've got a new comp, once due to corrupt installation as my comp just froze for some reason, and now because buggy RAM broke my Windows and I had to reinstall everything again) ::) I might just give up if it happens again in near future.

I've just had an unloadable lot.  I hadn't played it in ages so I don't know when it got borked.  I suspect it was Seasons or the patch (I don't have BV) though it could be that I deleted something from downloads that the lot really felt it needed.  I ended up moving the sim out.  I couldn't get into the empty lot either and had to bulldoze it.

Is there a MATY checklist of stuff to try when you hit that problem?

The only time I had an unloadable lot, it was after an EP (Pets?) somehow conflicted with some plastic flowers from TSR. I had no less than 40 plots on the lot. Enabling testing cheats before loading the lot threw up the errors, and I kept hitting delete until I could get in, then cleaned out the flowers and resaved.

I've certainly had lots that became unplayable - one where teens could no longer have any romantic interactions on the lot, or use hot tubs.  There was no CC on the lot and all interactions worked fine in comm lots.  I was not that attached to the house anyway, so I moved the family out and into a new lot and bulldozed the old lot.  I never did figure out what the problem was, although an interrupted save may have corrupted it.

Now I always keep copies of any houses/lots I really like in the lot bin so I can reproduce them if necessary.

I tend to do that too, unless the house is in a very early stage of construction when the family move in.

I once had a lot that suddenly for no reason became slow, on triple speed it took like a minute for a single sim minute to pass.  I kicked the family out and put them back in same thing, SAME THING, the house was literally unfurnished.  In the end i evicted them again and sent the lot down to hell where it belonged.  I still don't know what could have caused such a odd error, but from my experience in very very very rare circumstances the lots themselves just die or glitch up.

That can happen when a furious sim gets stuck at a portal, sometimes they aren't yet visible.  Although it was supposed to be cleared up in the NL patch, I think it's returned with Seasons, although not so frequently. (NB The nanny problem with portals has definitely made a comeback, although the delete sim schedules in the debugger will fix it.)  If you reset the lot with the debugger it sometimes solves the problem.

I have testingcheats on in userstartup.cheats and I wasn't getting an error message.  It wouldn't load with or without downloads and I couldn't package the lot and look inside with CI, so I concluded it was probably some sort of corruption - an interrupted save is possble rather than an object problem.  I guess there could have been a furious sim on a portal. 

So is this the beginnings of a checklist?

1. set boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and try to load the lot. 
2. Look at the error messages and fix any problems they reveal. 
3. try again to get into the lot with testingcheats on - use reset and delete on any error messages.
4. If you get in, use all/some the fix/memory/nuke options the lotdebugger and save. 

If you still can't get in:
5. try and package the lot - if it will package, you might get lucky and find the problem with CI
6. remove all CC and try again.  (can't take out kittenkillers?)
7. if it loads without CC, update hacks and hunt for the offending item.  in the time-honoured and tedious fashion.
8. move the family out and try again to get into the lot
9. once the family is out, bulldoze the lot. 

Looks like a good beginning.  I can't think of anything else, except, of course, the dreaded mobile phone.  I don't know if Seasons fixed this, as with macrotastics and sleepclock installed, my sims are always (well, usually) asleep when I save and exit a lot, and they only get given a mobile for a short time with the college adjuster.

I have been having lot troubles too.
I thought it would be nice to have a 'starter' street in which the houses all were the same. Then over time see how they changed as each family developed. So I put the little yellow house from Strangetown in the lots bin, and placed it 5 times on a small street.
The first house is fine, Stella Terrano lives there no problems, but any time I try to use the other houses the game crashes. My mistake was to send it to the lot bin furnished, I think. The furniture has gone, except for the pet stay away sign (Inge's). Though why one house works perfectly and it's clones do not is a mystery.
The bulldoze tool worked on them, so now I just have to look up the street number and download a replacement.

I did something similar - I downloaded Damian19942's Industrial Beginnings 1x1 lot from MTS2, and either used it as is with some redecoration as the sims began to earn some money - small lofts for one sim only - or I reconstructed  it a bit, got rid of the ground floor garage and made tiny 2-up 2-down terraces that had undergone a little modernisation (the two ground floor rooms that such a house would have had being turned into one larger all purpose room.)  They look really good in neighbourhood view, and they've all worked really well, despite the obvious limitations of 1x1 lots when the carpool and the school bus are due to arrive at the same time. 

I think the moral is, get a nice lot that you feel you can do something with from anywhere other than Strangetown, or build your own!  Even the La Fiesta houses are somewhat dicey if you move them into the lot bin to use in a different college hood.  It might actually be better to package them and then reinstall them with Clean Installer, just to check there's nothing odd in them.....

Strangetown has a number of features (like increased alien abduction rates) which seem to be installed.  For this reason, I was always a bit cautious about stealing lots from there for custom hoods.  There may be stuff you don't want embedded in the Strangetown lots, I thought.  Someone else might have evidence of this.  Your experience with Strangetown lots is pretty convincing to me.

I must admit, on the few installs where I've played Strangetown, I've found that moving families into new (and more playable me-created lots) has put a stop to the abductions etc., or at least set them to the normal odds rather than the obviously pre-ordained odds!  So, yes, I think the lots do have some wierd coding in them.

Sigh. Who knew that Strangetown was so much trouble! That house really isn't that special. It was just the one all my new people started out in so I thought it would be nice in a new hood. But there are plenty (well two) basic houses in the bin, I'm just using them.
As for making your own......my houses are just big boxes, I have no talent. Though I'm getting practice as the beach front lots are also difficult, so I have to build my own on them. So far the kindest thing I can say about them is that they are open plan  ;D However with those views it would be an ungrateful sim to complain!

Well, boxy houses are actually more playable, too many odd, poky corners and sims get stuck, or can't access something properly, so maybe you should persevere with housebuilding.  There are plenty of simple tutorials around for any particular feature you might want to try to make, quite a few here, I think. 

Alternatively, there are plenty of nice simple houses around on the net, just a matter of finding one that suits you - but always install with the Clean Installer, not the unmentionable from EAxis!