Thank you! This is all very helpful. We've had a heat wave in Minnesota, with really high humidity, and our a/c is on the fritz, so all of that could contribute. My comiputer case has room for air to run all around it, so that's OK.

I have a large fan running. If I take off the case and point the fan at it, clean everything out, that should help, right?

I'll get Speedfan.

Thanks again.

How would I do that? Put a meat thermometer on the case? I've got what I was told was a nice case with a big fan, but we run it a lot.  I'll try the fan thing. Thanks. It never occurred to me it might be something like that.

I can't imagine that the outfit has a very high poly. Besides it happened on two different lots and I'm positive no one had the same outfits because no one was the same age and gender.

Sort of. I mean, I used an outfit I hadn't used before in the second lot that had the glitch, but it worked fine for about two hours before crashing. Could that still be the cause?

In the other house, hmmm ... I'm trying to remember. They had two kids but I can't remember what they were wearing, or if it was new. The adults had been wearing the same outfits for a while.

Yes, that's it exactly. What Laylei posted.

Did you fix it? If not, can you still play your game?

Did you have to move to a new lot?

I have a random, serious glitch. I solved it the first time by moving to a new lot, or at least it's solved for now. But it's happened in two different neigbhorhoods now, so I'm getting concerned.

What happens is a sim suddenly loses their body, which turns into what looks like a flesh-colored paper doll, and only their heads appear. The lot then starts filling with blobs of color.

The things the lots have in common is:

1. They both used the insiminator, for different reasons. One to kill off a sim, one to change a family relationship.
2. They each had one ghost. One died of natural causes, the other was pushed.
3. Both sims wore custom clothing. However, one of them had the same clothes forever with no problem, and then suddenly she had no body.
4. Only one sim was affected on each.

Has anyone had this happen? How did you solve it?

I have a lot of downloads, but other than the Insim and Crammy boy's boy parts hack the only hacks I use come from this site. And I haven't downloaded anything new in weeks.

Do I need to reinstall? Is there a fix?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

P.S. I've had other glitches lately, but have solved them using the Lot Debugger (thanks, Pescado!). This bug can't be fixed that way. I already tried.

I can't enter. I've got dialup. I've made some fairly awesome houses, functional and pretty and would like to enter, but.

Looking forward to seeing what others make, though. 

As far as I can tell, once a sim becomes more removed than a first cousin they can date, flirt, etc., in theory.

In practice, the game is inconsistent. I've got some sims who lust after their in-laws and others who can't, even when I want them to. I've even had spouses unable to flirt with their spouse's first cousins! Quite vexing. But I've also got fathers-in-law who lust after their son's, or grandson's, wives, and who presumably could act upon that lust if I let them.

As for kissing cousins, it's really the only way to control your population, IMHO. Once you get past generation 4 you're going to have to have sims who are vaguely related get romatically involved, unless you want to keep creating more sims. At least I've found that to be true in my neighborhood.

That would be so awesome of you.

Right now there's really no point to opening a coffee shop. I tried to make one and ended up turning it into a ticketron video arcade that sells clothing.

Oh, I *can* download stuff at work. Question is, should I ... I kind of like being employed.

Oh, sorry. The one standing up looked tall for some reason so I thought it was a kid. That explains it. I'm kind of a toddler dictator. If they're not taking care of bodily needs they're playing with the charisma rabbit.

No time for bottle stealing in my game.

Maybe I ought to let up a bit. I think I'm missing out on some stuff ... my sims often surprise me if I just leave them to their own devices for a bit.

Of course, some of the dumber ones also go into the orange. Heather Huffington comes to mind.

I'm going download crazy the second I get home. Thanks for all the tips. I only knew about half of those.

And Marg, how'd you get your avatar? Did you cheat somehow? I've never had a kid tease a toddler by holding the bottle over their head.

Is that a normal interaction?

Santa is NOT nice. After I installed Santa my game went kablooey. And all he did was pee, and get trapped in my house.

So I reinstalled sans Santa and had to replay the last two weeks because I wanted to start from my pre-Santa saved game.

My advice is, save a backup before you install Santa. He may work OK for you, I know people who installed the holiday pack just fine, but I'll never install it again.

I plan to return it for a refund.

OK, so this is what isn't fair about all this: I have a fairly decent computer, I don't use any of the cheats you all use, and my game went buggy anyway ... what I want to know is, how the hell do you play all those sims in one house without crashing your game?

Do you all have mega computers, or did you sell your souls to the sim devil? 

Just wondering, is all.

Huh. I tried that, he was still there. Of course I deleted them before he arrived, anticipating problems ... maybe if I delete them while he's on the premises?

But how sick is that? My kid wanted to see Santa and instead she gets a fat old man with a prostate problem.

I think we should demand a fix from Maxis. That's just wrong.

Husky heads, LOL.

Many movie stars have bigger than average heads. It makes them look better on camera.

But you don't really have a bigger than average head, BlueSoup. It is nicely proportioned to the rest of you, which is not fat either.

And Pescado, if this is your idea of flirting heaven help you. (Ducks into own bunker, awaits bomb.)

This is one of the funniest threads I've read in a long time. Thanks, guys.

P.S. BlueSoup, you have a good sense of humor to put up with all this.

I've played a few other lots since with no problems. I think it's just that lot. It's the sorority at sim state, which not only has cars but vampires ... beginning to think that lot is buggy, possibly because of the NL elements I've introduced.

Anyway, thanks for trying to help.

Apologies if this has been covered.

Since getting NL and hence, cars, I have discovered that occasionally I can't use my car, or call for a cab, to leave a lot while at university. My sims are essentially trapped. This is not a permanent problem; the next night, I can leave again.

This happens while other sims are at final exams, which I suppose makes sense: is it because the game can only handle so much?

But it happens other times too, which is vexing because I try to have my vampires extend their nights so their exams happen before the sun comes up. They can leave once a night, it seems, and then no more.

Anyway, strange, and thought I'd share.

Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone know why?

You mean, that's it? Just oversized decorations? No trick or treating or anything? How lame. I still have them, so not a big deal. I just thought there would be more.

Yeah, I'm never baking them again, but I have a kid who plays and Santa's the only reason I bought the stupid pack. OK, and the Halloween decorations, which also are not behaving themselves. So i'm really pissed off that I wasted $15 and possibly added more bugs to an already buggy game.

Grrrrrrr ... makes me really not want to buy any more EPs.

Don't buy the Holiday pack, is my advice.

"Santa Klaus" arrives, eats my damn cookies, leaves a toy, and then goes potty. Again, and again, and again. He won't leave. I can't ask him to leave.

He always goes to the top floor of the house and then gets stuck in the bathroom. He can wander around, he just can't leave the room. And his constant ho-ho-hos grate on my nerves. I have to exit without saving.

This is making me hate Christmas.

I want my money back, but as that's not likely to happen, second best would be a fix.

Am I the only one this has happened to?

I adopted a very attractive sim baby. She's an adult now and drop dead gorgeous. But I could tell from the time she transitioned to toddler that she was going to be a looker.

On the other hand, her son (biological) was a cute toddler but kinda ugly as a kid, barely passable as a teen, but now that he's a young adult, he's rather nice looking.

What a kid looks like isn't always indicative of what they'll grow up to look like, in other words. And sim kids grow on you. I had one in my previous simcarnation (before the motherboard incident) with a nose like Pinnochio's. I still liked him.

BTW I always adopt babies because I want to name them. I don't want to get stuck raising a kid named Goopy. (Shudders.)

I don't know how, and even if I did I wouldn't. I like her the way she is.

I was just making an observation, is all.

I tend to play the hand I get, and anyway, in this case I made her that way on purpose.

Just wanted to start a philosophical conversation.

Well, yes, it's true that she can't dance yet, but I have other sims who can't dance who do this spazz out thing that's nothing like her timid little two-step, so I'm thinking it's a combination ... and it's not the smustle. I've seen the unenthusiastic smustle, and that's not it. 

Here's an interesting thing I've observed:

Background: I have two sims with one outgoing point each. One was born in the game, one I invented. Born in the game sim has four siblings and a loving family. She's a knowledge sim. Created sim has no family and is a family sim.

They have similar personalities, both nice, though knowledge sim is more playful than family sim.

So here's what I observed: They dance differently. Family sim hunches into herself and does a hesitant little sidestep, which I think is very cute. Knowledge sim rocks out.

So, what I'm guessing here is, Knowledge sim danced with her sibs all the time in highschool and therefore overcame her fear of it? Or maybe just always being surrounded by people took away some of her shyness? I think of her as more introverted than straight-out shy, while Family sim is definitely shy. She can barely look up when she's talking to someone.

Just an example, as far as I can tell, of learned sim behavior.

I just want them to be able to visit the neighbors, and take their toddlers with them on outings. I think after the "in business" EP a "family" EP would be really cool. One that added a lot more interactions to do with family members, like multitask while holding baby. And new ways for people to get body points, like rollerblades, jump ropes and bicycles.

Oh, and here's what I think would really be cool: A better neighborhood design tool, that lets you add roads, hills, whatever to an existing town. I've had towns get so developed there was nowhere for my sims to live. And I noticed that downtown has a lot of empty space around it. Why not let us add some streets?

Also, I downloaded a cool spooky house but it looks so dumb in my neighborhood because it has terrain with mountains, etc., and my town is flat (I've learned that flat works best, much less annoying to build houses on ...)

It would be great if I could add a hill (without resorting to drastic measures) so that house didn't look so dorky sitting there.

It should. 

I am also addicted. I've wanted this kind of game since I was a little girl. Barbies are so static, and they can't have babies, or grow old and die!

I'm hoping the charm will wear off soon, and although there are periods when I (gasp) don't feel like playing, it always comes back.

I just have to see what happens next ...