Thanks for the help, Angelyne, your patience is duly noted, no more ideas are expected. I did use the Norton Removal Tool and the Safe Mode. Never have cleared my restore points, I've made some now, but that's just closing the barn door after the cow's gone. 

After my last Windows update, things are even worse: I can't update my drivers, my temp file gives me error messages...   I may do another system restore and see what that does.

I'm not surprised that SecuRom gets blamed for everything. The whole sneaky way EA put it in our systems, the fact that you need a LOT of knowledge or balls ovaries to get it off your system, the whole "I am not a rootkit, I just look like one" business. If SecuRom were a person, it would be the fat, uninvited uncle that stays in your house for weeks. Of course when you find the silver missing and the toilet seat broken, he's the one you suspect. 

Sadly, I do not have such a restore point. I don't know if it was my general un-awesomeness or some sinister behavior by SecuRom, but when I checked (hoping to avoid having to do all the tedious/terrifying mucking about in my registry) there were none. My earliest one is after Norton started acting up.

Actually, I didn't find it. I also searched for the specific file under windows/system32 and didn't find it. Perhaps I don't have it? Another VISTA user said they didn't. I did install BV under my Administrative account.

I still have the miles long key under HKEY_USERS though. I haven't been able to get that out yet. Probably because I am still struggling with mastering DOS commands. I was successful in deleting the "CAUTION_NEVER_DELETE" key though.

Thanks Witch, but I already used this tool at Norton's instructions. It didn't resolve the issue. If I can manage to get the SecuRom off my computer, I'll know if it is the culprit or not.

I was able to take out the "CAUTION!! NEVER DELETE" key using the DOS command "regdelnull hkcu -s" after quite a bit of stumbling. It hasn't yet worked for the "regdelnull hku -s" command. It says it's scanning, but doesn't show anything. I still have the miles long key/folder in my HKEY_USERS and cannot delete it. I have not been able to get the "uaservice7/remove" command to work either. It's rather ballsy or stupid of me to attempt it as I knew nothing about DOS commands when I began.


My Norton suddenly shut off completely and instructed me to uninstall/reinstall. It gets as far as configuring, then prompts to uninstall/reinstall  over and over. I got some instructions from Norton Support, but I found myself unable to access all the files even with an Administrator account. I've used their removal tool, downloaded a fresh copy several times. I think one reason I'm even trying to remove the SecuRom rather than reformatting is to prove to myself that it is the cause of my problems. I am pretty close to giving up though and doing just that.

If it matters, I have a VISTA Ultimate 64 bit system on a 4 month old laptop.

Well my Paid Norton is not working at all. I believe it's SecuRom but I haven't been able to completely get it off my system, that's the only thing that will tell me for sure. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Norton multiple times and followed the instructions they gave me to no avail.

I'm tearing my hair out trying to follow the SecuRom removal instructions posted here. I may give up and reformat, it would be easier and I don't have much to lose on this computer.

Got rid of the "DO NOT DELETE" with your advice muridae.     I'll keep trying on the other one.

A question from yet another non-awesome person. This is what I get when I run the RegDelNull commands



No options to delete anything, no results in the scan (if I'm reading it right)

Yet in my registry, I see the accursed files:






Any words of advice? I did perhaps screw it up by deleting whatever I could before running the scan, several folders of crap in the SecuRom folder. 

Tell that to my Norton Anti-Virus caught in a continual uninstall/reinstall loop.    If I was more awesome, I'd already have the Securom off my computer. When I do, if I have the same problem, I'll stop blaming SecuRom. Yes, I have contacted Norton and tried all their fixes. At first they were helpful, but now they've taken to repeating the same instructions over and over. I guess they're taking a page from EA's customer support manual.

Has anyone had success using these steps on a VISTA machine?

You can find the skins and some of the eyes at sims file vault.

Have you seen this over at MTS2? http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=239851&c=1

Finally got around to trying it. The NPC's & Townies look great. Just a few observations:

Pets and Seasons NPC's appear to be the same as the EA defaults. I wasn't sure if they were included or not, or perhaps I missed something on the download list.

I'm not awesome enough to know if changing the vehicles that drop off the NPC's and the sims in their new homes is possible. That would be wonderful.

Not that I would make such a dumb mistake  but if anyone thinks it's not working, make sure you changed the N001 in the Program files folder, not the Documents folder. 

I really like the idea of having separate theme based NPC's and townies in different neighborhoods. This process is much easier to me than swapping out different NPC packages.

Ok followed all the links, found a few things I needed to add. When I clicked on the " a bunch of stuff I don't know where I got..." I got an error page: "Not Found
The requested URL /guest/MadameMim/thatWhichIsUnfound.rar was not found on this server"

I grabbed everything else except the inteeninator and the default preg clothes replacement.

I just noticed that the inteenimator is part of the shopping list. I've never used it, never really wanted to. Is it essential?

I've taken a look, and I think I'll try it out. I have most things on the list.

Actually, I discovered an incredibly easy way to do this here: http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tutorials/tutorial-mesh-linking.html

It seems to have worked. I plan to post some skins I've linked at insim soon.

I did it! Worked beautifully. I got both ends of the spectrum in CAS (that's the BJD skintone and the Klingon skintone) and everything came up as possible kids in CAS. This is great. Someone asked about the elvish woodsy so I'll throw out a run-down of what I put where if anyone is interested. I don't think anyone else could use the files though, since I've got various bodyshapes mixed in as well:

.01: Ephemera BJD skintones and vampire skintones (Enayla Pixie Haunt, Pixie Hunter and Porcelain Doll)
.03 to .07: Asian skintones by Chakaru, Ephemera and Enayla

The rest contain normal skintones by Enayla, Summersong86 and Oepu, some have Allen ABQ hair added, Bodybuilder, CPU, Fat, skinny all sorts of bodytypes mixed in

.08: Very pale skintones
.09 to .14: Maxis light
.3 to .33 : Maxis Medium
.6 to .64: Maxis Tan
.91 to .97: Maxis Dark, though the last few are much darker than Maxis

1.0 to 1.7: "Woodsy" These are my plantsim skintones, Enayla's Pixie Nymph, Glory, Moss, Ashes and Fiend
2.0 to 2.7: "Greys" Enayla Pixie Winter, Diamond, Dusk, Guilt, Incubi, Royal, Steel, ending with Sim Cribbing's Midnight
3.0 to 3.9: "Alien" Summersong 86 and my recolors of her FX alien, Enayla Pixie Anomaly, Serpent, Elven Ranger's Cardassian, and my recolors of Elven Ranger's Klingon skintone.

Yes, I have way too many skins. This was very easy though. The hardest part was tracking down all the skins.

Next, I'm going to learn how to attach non-default body shape meshes.

Yeah, I knew that. I'm sure I can handle the Simpe part, I'm just wondering if it will work to put the Asian skintones at smaller than maxis values and I also want to make sure about the skintones linked to special bodyshapes.

I'm going to start working on this with my massive skin collection. I've got them organized in the order I want them, but I have a few questions before I begin.

I plan to set them up like this:

The smallest value would be the Ephemera BJD skins. I would love to get these on servos, but never plan to actually breed sims with these
Next would be vampire skins, it's doubtful I will use these for breeding either.

Now I'm not sure about this, but I thought I would put Asian skins next. I want them grouped together, they range from extra-pale to tan. I didn't want them interspersed with the other skins as I don't want a random asian sim popping up from other combinations.

Then I would put the normal skins from extra-pale to dark in the appropriate ranges.

Lastly, I have the fantasy skins: elvish/woodsy types and finally alien. I don't want aliens popping up in my medieval hood, but don't mind elvish in strangetown.

Does it sound workable?


I also have bunches of non-default skintones linked to different bodyshapes, geneticizing them won't affect anything will it?


Note:  If you want to add hair to skintones, just go to insim adult and get AllenABQ's overlays. They make it very easy. The overlays even work with Gimp if you don't have photoshop. They range from light to very hairy.

Yes, when I went back and checked them that's what had happened to mine too. I get an empty package with nearly every hair set I bin, either black or blonde too. I'm also getting weird grey results too, some color (so far it's been red or brown) will get placed as the grey, even though I've selected something else.

OK, I tried rebinning some extracted Maxis hair and they all showed up except for the black, including a custom color I added. This time, I left all the options unchecked completely. It's a better result than I've had before, so I'll keep trying this way.

Thanks for this great tool and for updating it for Pets. Since pets though, I haven't been able to bin any hair that shows up in the game. I have SimPe 0.06.2.20832  and the Color Binning Tool 2.29.1. I had the same problem with the previous versions of both as well. The hair doesn't show up once it's been rebinned. It sounds a lot like the problem you have mentioned above. I don't get any error messages though, everrthing appears to be working fine but the rebinned hair doesn't show up. Under my output options, I have everything checked except "Generate Single Package". I don't have the "Hide from catalog" checked and haven't done anything with the Guid or Text lines.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? I'm going to try some different options and bin exported Maxis hair next to see if that works.

I have this hack in my game. I use it all the time. A lot of people have since Dec, 2005. So it is probably just coincidence that the game crashed. Maybe he could have been a little cuddlier in his response, but I'm not going to write off his very useful hacks.

You can get Louis skin defaults here:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=103239

I use Enayla's now, but these are what I used before, they're very nice.