For your convenience, I have bolded areas where you could improve.

Post an error log, let's see if we can't save you some time tracking the problem down.

With question 1, are you talking about having your profile folder (in My Docs) on an external drive, or the actual games? Because they'll work fine on an external drive (although they may be a bit slower due to USB limitations), but moving the profile folder requires moving My Docs itself.

By the way, if someone at EA is reading this: switch to the My Saved Games directory. That's what it's there for. Or even make it so the user can pick a directory to save to! That would be the day...

Exactly. Except they've fucked it up so bad that the "YOU ARE A BANDWIDTH THIEF" image is also blocked, tries to redirect the request back to the same image, fails again, and repeats in a constant loop. Although now it only seems to give a 403 error instead.

Oddly, they've left their image directory open. I wonder what will happen if a couple of people run DownThemAll! on it...
RefControl will work, but only if everyone uses it. Since not everyone is using Firefox, this is an unrealistic expectation, and so it's easier just to rehost it if some site decides to have a stupid policy (copy broken image URL, go to favourite image hosting site, select web URL, paste, upload, link).

Rehosted image:

Market research suggests that more European consumers have DVD drives in their computers, while CD drives are still the majority in America. Both regions have the exact same content, aside from the fact that the CDs have a little extra piece of data that tells you to insert disc 2.

This is not MTS2/SS2. This is MATY, and we have a fileshare friendly policy here.

A: You've forgotten to link.
B: You're meant to hotlink stuff from TSR, not rehost it!

Because the fight club bases your chances of winning a fight on several factors, including body skill and fighting experience (affected by how many fights you've won and lost), as opposed to the EAxis fights, which are sadorandom but partially affected by body skill?
Actually, a lot of people make THANKS THIS IS GREAT posts instead of using the convenient button. It's just that most users never see them because the posts get deleted for clogging up feedback queues.

This probably means that the Stuff Packs are now running on the Seasons engine instead of the OFB engine. I think the others would try and patch OFB if you had it installed.

By the way, collection files in the downloads folder will still work. I recommend you keep them together, just to save yourself from accidentally pulling a Ness.

Glamsim appears to have anti-hotlink protection, given that visiting the URLs of those images leads to http://www.glamsim.com/images/links/Theft.gif (which doesn't actually work, Firefox gives a "website is redirecting in a way that will never complete" error).

You should be using the OFB versions.

As for the resets, turn debug mode on, and attach an error log.

From viewing the URLs of the first 4 images:

One is from isc.ibibi.com (ibibi.com appears to be a redirect to TSR), one is from isc.thesimsresource.com. and two were from Photobucket (even though they should have been hotlinked from TSR). So my guess is that your place at work has blocked TSR and Photobucket, but allows the ibibi redirect because it isn't TSR itself.

And a reminder: if it's a paysite, hotlink away! If it's MTS2 (or any site that requires registration for viewing thumbnails), rehost, as some people might not be logged in at the time, and so the images won't load.

If you're at work: stop complaining that they're preventing you from being less productive, and GET BACK TO WORK.

To be honest, "MOAR" irritates me more than stupid formatting techniques. It's one of the few pieces of lolcat speak which manage to get out of the medium that they're allowed/accepted in (plus, I can block the lolcats without learning how to edit in Greasemonkey, while filtering "MOAR" would take more effort. I don't choose to block the lolcats anymore, as some of them are genuinely funny, but the majority aren't what I would call laugh out loud material). Same with "lulz", what's wrong with doing something for the laugh/laughs? And I hadn't heard "NAO" before, but I'm adding that to the list.

The front refers to ricers/rice burning, and I assume that the back is mocking the people who do it.

They can't... unless you've been killing kittens.

If you mean the link in the first post, no, that won't work, as the URL has been mangled by the BBS's link shortening system.

UAService7 only installs itself if you run the game as a limited user. It won't install itself if the only user account is an admin account.

Actually, you can see the special event scenes with that amount of RAM, as I could see them on my old PC, and that only had 512MB of RAM. However, they're disabled on my new PC (for an obvious reason: 512MB of RAM + all EPs up to Seasons + Vista = . I haven't even tried playing in months, what with the slowdown, and the lag).

Decided that this deserves its own thread, instead of being buried in the abandoned mods thread or at the end of the old nudist hack thread.

WAY TO READ THE THREAD, GENIUS!

It was also shipped with the Deluxe Edition and Pet Stories, but no one noticed (H&M Stuff used the Pets/Seasons executable, so SecuROM didn't get installed on most user's machines, no one needed to buy Deluxe Edition, and noone bought Pet Stories at all). They are worried about it being on their computers because it has been proven that it is incompatible with some CD burners, anti-virus programs, firewalls, etc. Also, it provides an easy back door for hackers to gain admin access to your PC. And it doesn't provide a way for Maxis to track who's cracked the game, as it doesn't work on actual pirated copies. It only works if Joe gives a copy of the disc to Jane, not if someone releases a disc image onto the internet.

I think the problem is actually that ShortyBoo doesn't know how to do a cd command.

Stickied, and added to the FAQ.

Links

Popular Tools & Tutorials

Tutorial: Clean custom neighbourhoods, by Jordi
Empty and Cleaned-up Neighborhood Templates (for making a custom 'hood with NO GOOPY!)

Creating Default Skins, by Angelyne

Checking polygon counts of objects, by Baratron

Hair Binning SimPe plugin, by Theo

Correcting the DNA of Strangetown premade characters, by Baratron

SimPE - SimPE - The Sims 2 Package Editor, found here.

Several useful tools by Jfade, including the Mac Unpac, Wardrobe Wrangler, and The Compressorizer!

disaSim2 - Sims 2 BHAV console disassembler 2.3d - contributed by Syberspunk.
Note: The latest version, updated by Shy, can be found in here.

Content/Hack Scanner Tools - useful for scanning your game for unwanted/conflicting hacks, and deleting content. - Contributed by Syberspunk.
The Sims2Pack Clean Installer (S2PCI) aka Pheverstool

Paladin's Sims 2 Hack Conflict Detection Utility

Dizzy's Sims 2 Mod and GUID Checker Tool
Note: The latest version, updated by Shy, can be found in this post.

CEP - CEP is a tool that makes normally unrecolourable objects, recolourable.  Also required to make these items show up in your game.

Other Links
Homestarrunner.com - One of JM"s favorite sites, from which he borrows a lot of phrases.  For example, the child board in the Peasantry, Made-Up Animals, has this description:  "If you were a sim, what would you like as if?"  This is from one of Strong Bad's emails.  Made-Up Animals is where MATY Members upload their self-sims if they wish to do so.  Check out the HRWiki, and the HRWiki's list of H*R sightings on MATY.

Affliates/Other AwesomeNet sites: PAYSITES MUST BE DESTROYED!: Pescado's new business venture. See EA's EULA before complaining.
TSR MUST BE DESTROYED!: A redirect to the "The Sims Resource" section of PMBD. See EA's EULA before complaining.




Credits - In no order whatsoever
RainbowTigress - Writing the majority of the original FAQ and this FAQ.
Flying Fish Systems - For saving the sanity of Simmers everywhere.
Dizzy - Writing the "Using hacks in TS2" entry
BlueSoup - For writing several of the original FAQ entries.
Frankenbeasley - For writing the mission statement.
Vcline - Pointing out a broken image link.
Syberspunk - For showing everyone how NOT to post.
Flowerchile -
Kyna -
Lorelei - For giving new users a lesson in general MATY attitudes towards idiots and new users who act like they own the forum.
Venusy - For modifying the FAQ into version 2.0, guide to playing "legally backed" up games.
BastDawn - Editing the old 2.0.0.6beta FAQ to version 3.0

Questions, comments, or suggestions?
Post them in this thread.