I wouldn't mind the autonomous part of diary writing being removed, there are the very rare moments when I may want to direct them to do it just for the heck of it though.  If we take away their diaries what will they obsess over instead?

Interesting link Gwill.

Brandi (adult) came home from work with a teen npc (paper girl) - she is in the Athletic career.  She currently takes the coach to work if that helps anyone. (Npcs are not supposed to have jobs since they are already employed).

The hobby lots seem to have sims that aren't there, when my sim arrives there are only 4 sims on the lot (I think that includes the instructor), if I click on a career reward more sims names appear in the menus then are visibly present on the lot.  I can often hear sims getting 'in the zone' but cannot see them.

Other visitors to hobby lots don't come and go, there are a couple when you arrive, but once they leave there is nobody but your playable and the instructor - surely this cannot be right?

Some npc types no longer appear in the phonebook - is this related to the npcs coming home from work thing somehow?    This includes the mail carrier and the newspaper delivery teen.

I have a backup made just before installing FT several hours ago, so I thought I'd try this out for you, I've tried putting two pre-FT permaplat elders into the energiser and it's working normally on each attempt, the first elder I put through five times (I dragged a need down between attempts), the second has been through seven times and it's still working normally, the next step I'll try putting normal platinum sims through..

Edit:
 I can't seem to reproduce the issue regarding platinum sims having problems with the energiser with my pre-FT permas or the normal permas.  Smart Milk is also normal.  Are you guys sure you don't have have anything left floating around in your downloads?

There is an instructor and two hydroponic garden career rewards at the Nature secret lot, I'm guessing the others will have various career rewards for skilling too.  I'm using a custom hood, except it's the normal type of custom hood rather than cleaned templates and such.  The premades all died a fast death before gameplay commenced.  The sim gained in nature while doing things at the secret lot, though I don't recall if there were icons and I haven't yet taken him to a normal community lot.

Playing since release and I didn't know the mail days - how embarrassing.

That was a great idea about the cellphones Kyna, I just tried it with the newspaper girl and it didn't work though.  The mail woman hasn't been by in a couple of days, not since the last bills were paid, they usually come every day at the same time whether you have bills or not so this is unusual too, though it is possible that they changed it on purpose.

If they are trying to block the npc's they're doing a poor job of it since the maid is still in the phone book. Thank you for responding cassblonde, makes me feel a little better to know they are missing in at least one other persons game.

This bug could be caused by one of two things, an actual Freetime bug, or my game files are screwed.

Here is what I've discovered so far.

A new sim in a new neighbourhood created to test Freetime through normal gameplay with some maty mods and three types of CC (face templates, default eye replacements and default skin replacements).  This sim met three npcs..The maid, the newspaper girl and the mail carrier girl.  He became friends with the newspaper girl when she dropped by.  She does not appear in the phonebook at all though, and neither does the Mail Girl.

The maid (Kaylynn Langerak if you're interested) is the only one that does appear.

I have tried pulling all maty mods - still the same.  So I renamed the TS2 folder within My Documents and let it generate a new one when I started the game again.  Still the same.  So, I need to know now if anybody else has the papergirl or mail carrier in their phonebooks since Freetime, because if you do I will probably have to reinstall all of it.  If you do have them in your phonebook could you check to see if any sims that have met them only since FT was installed has them also.

The interesting part is that the the 'Call Friends' option on a maty mod (phonehack?) includes the papergirl, so I know they are there somewhere.   

ETA: changed mail carrier to newspaper girl

Is it possible that the although the aspiration meter is showing Plat that it could actually be green or under?  I've been reading about problems like this on the bbs, along with memories having reversed colours, so it made me think that perhaps some idiot reversed the aspirations too.

Yes, it worked like a charm too.  In my own case a couple of steps weren't necessary because the files were apparently not installed, possibly because I have read-only dvd and cd drives.

I'm a Vista 64bit user and could not find the UAService7 at all, after running through all the other steps though and before rebooting I did see a service belonging to Sony DADC called something like CmdLineEXT_x64 (I forget exactly what it was but it was something very close to that).  After the reboot to finish the removal procedures it was gone.

*edited* I forgot to say thankyou to all who have contributed to this thread, I couldn't have done it without you 

Avast does seem to cause some gameplay lag, I right click the icon and then click 'Stop On-Access Protection' when I want to play TS2.  It only affects this game though.  As to problems, how are you to know you have a sneaky virus if you don't have anything to detect it    My AVs have stopped a few over the years, I've learnt to avoid certain types of websites because of it.  Plus they can detect outbound viruses which protects other users often using your e-mail. For all you know your pc could be a slave that infects other pcs, it's bad form not to use anti-virus.  At the very least you should have firewall protection.

My college student ran (hehe) into this problem last night at the Potter Bungalows beach destination.  He just suddenly lost the ability to walk up and down the tiniest of slopes, but he seems okay now that he has graduated and lives in the main neighbourhood. *touch wood*

He also has the teleport ability. 

I outright crashed the other night because it ran out of memory, only 32mb (either 32mb or 64mb) left out of 2 Gigabytes    I was trying to get all the townies to show up on the lot though, but it's never crashed like that in previous expansions.  Perhaps that particular option on the npc & townie maker (which looks like the repo mans gun now) is bugged.

No it wouldn't have been for me, back then I was using a soundblaster - I forget which one exactly though.  Possibly the 5.1 version

I used to get sound related crashing when Uni came out, it happened right up until Nightlife at which point it stopped happening.  My guess is that there was a bug that someone at EA found and fixed *crickets chirping* no really, they actually fixed that one in an expansion

I have not played BV since the first couple of days really (hubby begs, whines, winges and moans for me to come heal him on EQII and lays on a guilt trip whenever I try to play TS2) so I have not yet experienced this new possible sound crash. 

I do recall that only a very small number of us had this problem, a search of the bbs tech help section may dig up an old thread I started way back then as well as a couple of others.  I recall spending a very long time trying to figure out the cause but ultimately all I had was that it was related to more than three money trees becoming harvestable at the same time (it was the sound of that happening that would cause a crash/sound loop and would force a reset of the pc). 

As I recall I only encountered one or two others on the bbs getting it, and I think I once came across a post here that seemed very much like my own experience.

Someone mentioned elsewhere here that they suspected EA had used a lot of old Uni code for BV, I've been thinking this myself to be honest with the Barista/Tour Guide problems seeming so similar, the way hotels operate is very similar to dorms, very old bugs resurfacing that had previously been fixed, and now this sound crashing that you are experience.  There are some things on the bbs that also seem familiar, I saw a mention of something that sounds very much like the old NPC/Slowdown bug (which I'm quite concerned about actually - this is a far worse scenario than the tour guide issue).

I've been seeing this corrupted thing pop up in chat bubbles since before BV now.  It's not just corrupted memories that cause it in my opinion since I have seen it when sims cannot get past certain things too.  I've also seen it in brand spanking new neighbourhoods less than an hour old.  It's puzzling to say the least.

Tell me it isn't true! 

I recall reading something about shelves on the BBS last night, I'm pretty sure there was a list of ways to do it and their effects.

The triple speed thing sometimes happens in my game, sometimes it slows down when they arrive, other times it just keeps on going, and still other times it's at a normal pace.

With Vista you can click Customize Destkop, then look for the 'Change Desktop Icons', when you have that open just uncheck the box next to the recycle bin. 

I don't know what happens if you just delete it though.

So they don't run amok trying to electrocute people then?  *sniff*

Obvious to simple minded folk maybe, but to my uber-smart mind the idea of just making friends with him seemed far too simple.  Apparently I don't just think outside the box, I'm in a completely different box altogether!  My first week or so in EQII saw me falling through the world, I blame it on the Tomb Raider games luring me with secret hidey places, my husband will tell you - I'm obsessed with Secrets "ooh look! Is that a secret ledge leading to a secret tunnel with a secret climby to a secret..." well you get the idea, TR3 was my absolute favourite but they don't make them like they used to   

Does anything happen to the Servos when they try to swim in the sea?

If only I'd known you had to make friends with the Old Man, it would have saved a lot of time. 

I thought the goal was to find a way to reach the Fruit Bowl on the next level up so I had my Traveller family run around trying to get the Ninja to teach them Teleporting, with that trick up their sleeve they returned to the Old Mans place and the guy teleported up to the Fruit Bowl and viewed it, of course nothing happened, so I thought "Hey!  Perhaps you're supposed to get on the roof!"     I click an area on the roof and select the 'teleport here' option but my Sim vanished, ooh err! Just as I realised he had ended up somewhere near the road he started doing Tai-chi, at which point the Old Man walked up to him and started to tell the Dragon story.

I felt a bit silly then