I'm having the blue lot issue too and just decided what the hell and installed 1.7/2.2.     To those who have WA installed- Did the game go through 2 seperate downloads and installs?

I launched the launcher, and it asked if I wanted to update. I  said yes, it downloaded, I went through the install wizard and it said World Adventures is now updated to 2.2.....
Then I launched the launcher again, and it asked if I wanted to update AGAIN.  I said sure why the hell not and this time at the end it said The Sims 3 is now updated to 1.7......

Is this the way it's supposed to be for those who have WA installed?  We have to patch both WA and the base game?  Or did I just screw myself?

I'm wondering if it is a corrupted save issue, if the new patch will resolve it.  I really hesitate to load yet another patch on top of an already f-up game.  

Death-Jester - are you saying that you are doing a Save As and are still getting blue lots?

I do not ever do save as.  Perhaps corupted saves could be part of it?  If the game does an auto save when loading a vacation destination, and again when returning home, perhaps during this process it's corrupting?  I'm not super technical so I don't even know if this is possible.

sylmenstra- My saves all seem to create .backup folders whether they are fucked or not.  I'm currently playing a not blue lot game it has a .backup.  

Edit-
Fuck it.   I just installed the newest patch.   Whatever happens happens.  I'll post findings later.

OK, I'm starting to get pissed off.

I played for several hours with my new Sunset Valley, loaded different families, sent some on vacation, and no blue lots.   Thought my issue was resolved.   Saved my Kent family after returning from France, checking to make sure no lots were blue.  Then loaded the Single Moms family, redecorated their house, gave them makeovers, played them for a while, did not send them on vacation as they are broke.  Checked to make sure there were no blue lots, saved and quit.  

Loaded up the game today, entered the SingleMom's saved game and entered to find 90% of the lots blue.   Backed out, restored the save where I was in the Kent household and the game was fine.  

Decided to delete yet again, all my cache files, reinstalled everything via the launcher, tried to load the SingleMom saved game.   All blue lots.   I just can not seem to figure this out.  
What is scary is that the game looked fine when I saved it, but upon re-entering it was totally borked.  
I'm trying figure out what I might have done between the Kent save and the Single Mom save that would have caused this.  The only thing I can come up with is that I did do a save on a color combination in CAS on a custom lipstick.    I'm thinking that may have possibly done it.  

I will now test this and report back.  

REPORT - I have saved a color combination on a custom lipstick, restarted the game and am not getting the blue lots. 

I'm not sure what 'evtl' is.  Evil?  I meant I did not put back any of the custom paterns that I originally had in my game before installing WA.  The game I'm currently running is custom pattern free. I do have the Store patterns that were created by EA, but I'm not considering them custom as they are EA created.  

I have been playing my new hood with/out issue so far.   I partially redecorated the Goths house, including adding a basement with the new tool, switched to the Steel household, then sent him on vacation, tomb raided, returned, and no blue lots.  I'm going to continue to mess around with this current game.  I'm hopeful that the issue with the blue lots is in fact resolved by reinstalling CC via the launcher, and not reinstalling any custom patterns.  Unfortunately it appears I've learned this too late to save my original game.  

Hmmm...... interesting about that back up folder too.  I did notice my new game has a .backup folder now as well where before my saves did not.    Perhaps that has something to do with it as well.

OK, I didn't start a 3rd game.  I rolled back my new game to the save before, and all is going fine so far.   I realized I placed a lot that I took from my old Sunset Valley (the borked one)  into my new one. I was trying to avoid having to remodel all my lots from scratch.   I rolled back to a save BEFORE I did that and the weirdness with the dropper registering everything as simple flooring is gone again. 

Note to self- Do not copy lots from saved games that are imploding and put it nice new saved games.  STUPID STUPID BAD BAD

Question to anyone who is NOT having problems with their game. --   I noticed that when I try to use the CAS tool on any existing stairs,railings or fences on my existing lots it does not work.  I need to delete the stair,rail, or fence and then once I place a new one am able to use the CAS tool on it.   After placing a new one, I can use the CAS tool on it normally like anything else. 

Is this the way it's working for everyone else?  Or is it yet another sign of borkage for me?

I aplogize for my defensiveness nanacake, I'm just very frustrated right now.

I deleted all my Cache files again including the DDCache files for the launcher (after backing them up) reinstalled all the CC I had with the launcher, with the exception of custom patterns and tried again.   When I went into my old Sunset valley the Goths house was still blue.  NO resolution there.  I then went into my new game of sunset valley and the issue I had with the Goth house where the eyedropper in build/buy mode was registering everything as "simple flooring" seemed to be resolved.   I then went into some other houses in edit mode and made some changes.   I then went back into the goths and again the dropper was showing everything as "simple flooring"

I will now create yet another new game file of sunset valley to see if that changes anything.   I'm begining to abandon hope of fixing my original Sunset valley that was pre-WA as no matter what I do, when I enter the town for the first time, the Goth house is blued out even before I go on vacation. 

One observation.  I just noticed that there  is now a 'favorites' catagory in the CAS patterns display box.   Was this always there?  Or is this a new feature of WA?

I'm so sorry nanacake, can you please link me to another thread where we are discussing lots turning blue after returning from vacations in the World Adventures Ep? I'll gladly take my posts there. 

I do not use the "monkey installer crap."
I did take out all my custom content. 
Deleted all the cache files.  Now including the UserPresets.

I started a new game and STILL am getting wonkyness.  Now, after playing Sunset Valley Goth house for just a bit, If I try to clone anything using the eye dropper, it registers as "simple flooring" and will not clone it properly.  EVERYTHING is registering as simple flooring .. walls,objects, fences everything.  I did not however remove my DDCache folder, and that does have some non EA created content in it. I will now do that as well and test. Again.  I'm am starting to think this has something to to with custom patterns as well.

I have been deleting cache files, reinstalling, and testing on my old game and a new game since Midnight of the 17th and am still having problems.   

Yes Heli, I have a userpresets.package file there.  For Kicks, I'll move it out and restart the game to see if it makes a difference.  The save is basically unplayable now as it is.  

I'll report back.

Report - I removed the user presets file, launched my game I'm having problems with, and the Goth house is still blue, I suspect if I took a sim on vacation they would come back to find all houses blue. 

I have custom patterns installed in both my Mods folder as .packages and through the launcher as simspack files.  This is an interesting theory.  Is there something else I should be doing with that file rather than just removing it?

Yep that's near exactly what I'm getting.    Now when I try to change families, the game crashes.   I'm not getting these issues with the other saved game which is Riverview (so far) or a game I've just started as a "new game"  that's Sunset Valley (again so far). 

I did notice that when I first enter my old Sunset Valley saved game, even though it looks like all the lots are fine, the Goth's mansion is a big blue box even before anyone leaves for vacation.

I'm starting to get a sick feeling that my main saved game that I play 90% of the time is now BFBVFS.  I have "restored" to the previous save and the Goth's mansion is still a blue box.   

I'm going to keep playing the new sunset Valley game I've just started and see what happens. 

Wonderful.  I return from my first vacation to find my family standing in a large rectangle of solid blue.  I go to map view to see 90% of my lots in Sunset valley are now missing... they are a solid blue color where the lot used to be.  Residential, Community lots are both affected.  There are a few lots left ... both residential and community so it's not something effecting one or the other. Quit w/out saving and I tried again after taking all my mods out of my Mods folder, leaving only terain paints, objects, and patterns and my skin/eye replacements. Took a family on vacation, returned and all the same lots that turned blue the last time were blue again this time.  The tried taking out my terrain paints, same thing.  Finally,  I took out my entire Mods folder and the Resourse.cfg file and deleted all my compositorcache and simcompositorcache files.   Went on a vacation and came back and houses were there nothing had dissapeared.  

I will now start feeding back my CC back into the game to try to figure out what is causing this and report back here.

But just wanted to post this in case anyone else is having this problem.  I figured simply taking out my mods would be enough to avoid tight pants but it seems ordinary CC may be a problem too.

And in case anyone is wondering I have a store bought version, latest patch that released with WA.

UPDATE - On a hunch - before I started feeding everything back into the game bit by bit... I tried moving my Resource.cfg and Mods/Packages folder to the World Adventures folder that was created when installing WA under C/ProgramFiles/ElectronicArts/TheSims3WorldAdventures rather than C/ProgramFiles/ElectronicArts/TheSims3  - I restarted the game sent my sim on vacation, completed a opportunity, returned and YES! Sunset Valley was normal and all my CC was showing up.  I do not have any true mods in there right now, but it seems as if the Resource.cfg and Mods file may need to be simply moved to the WA folder to get this issue resolve.   I will be playing more with the game as is now to make sure it's actually resolved.  

2nd UPDATE - I switched to another family, sent them on vacation and came back to find all the lots blue again.  So moving the files is not a permanent solution.  Back to square one.

I was getting this same error.  I have purchased copies of both the base game and the EP.   If you have arred copies - I can not make any promises this will help you.  Hell I can not even promise this will help if you bought your game.   

I was getting this endless loop of the game trying to update every time I clicked on the WA shortcut icon and the launcher would launch and start trying to update the game, even though I had already updated it, or had thought I had updated it.  It would then give the message you got, and shut every thing down without launching the game.   I tried clicking the the WA shortcut icon several times and each time eventually got the same error. 

I finally tried to launch the game with the original Sims 3 shortcut, NOT the WA shortcut.    The game again went into updating again... but this time the update finished with no problem. 

I then used the WA shortcut to launch the game and was able to get into the game.   

Not sure if it will help you, but it worked for me. 

Not sure if this is the same issue but I had a sim who could not use his cell phone.  I would click on it in inventory and get "no actions avaliable" and I could not click on sims thumbnail to call them from the relationship panel either.  I could however call with a regular wall or desk phone.   I resolved this by using the computer to move him out into some other random famblys home.  When I loaded the famblys home I moved the borked sim to, he was able to use the cell phone from inventory normally again.  I moved him back into his original household and all seems to be resolved now.   

Wall Clock from promo- compressorized;

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9b31f87fe0263e9c8d78a0e555291609d17f1f54ea6c9d1a79b5ba589d1986ba

I think they are new..  but can someone verify they are not in the clothing full set and are just not pictured?  It seems odd that they would have those 4 items as seperate purchaces. For 1000 pts for clothing, you would THINK they would at least include everything.


Link to the 3 files I have -
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9b31f87fe0263e9c8d78a0e555291609092bf688fdb9b501d9ecd7d091ba63d2




[/quote]

It should be ok to delete your DDCache folder if I want to wipe and reinstall all my .sims3pack files correct?

My current problem is that I have "deleted" content via the launcher that is now gone from my downloads folder and is not showing up in the launcher anymore, but is still showing up in my game.   If I have kept all the downloaded sims3pack files that I DO want,  can I just delete the DCCache folder and then reinstall all the files I do want via the launcher again?  

Will that rid the game of the offending items that are still in my game even though the launcher lies and says they are not?  

It's happening in my game too. I do not have awesomemod or any other core mod.   It started happening after patch 1.3.   Happened to my Sunset Valley Art Gallery.   I do have lots of CC and other minor annoyance fix-type mods.

Legal copy - no core mods, several non core mods.  Never replaced any of the original game files, just .package files in my Mods folder.

Left my mods folder where it was- patch installed just fine.  

Only issue to report is now my music is hit or miss.  Before the patch, music would play in buy/build mode and the stero would play music.  Now its random.  One game load I had no music from the stereos or buy/build, I exited and reentered the game and this time I can hear the stero music but still no buy/build music.    

Hrmm.... The ASUS is off Newegg. I hesitated with that one as I'm not familiar with the brand as I am with HP or Dell.
I've been told they are a great manufacturer of motherboards and would probably make a decent laptop.
Darn decisions! 

Thanks for the replies - looks like that model of dell is out then.  I'm going to look around a bit more but I'll stick with better video card.  Keeping in mind RAM can be updated later. 

I'm looking to purchase a new laptop to play Sims2 and 3.  Yes I know desktops are better for games, but my situation is requiring a laptop.

I'm looking at laptops with the following :

Dell
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9550 (2.66GHz/1066Mhz FSB/6MB cache)
6GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
250GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) with Free Fall Sensor
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650

vs

HP
Intel® Core™2 Duo processor P8600  (2.4GHz /1066MHz FSB/ 3MB L2 cache)
6GB DDR2
500GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics

vs

ASUS
Intel Core 2 Duo  P8600(2.4GHz/1066MHzFSB/  L2 Cache 3MB )
4GB DDR2
320GB  @7200rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M  1GB DDR2 VRAM

Any obvious winners? All are around the same price with the Dell being a bit more. 
What is more important?  Better Processor/RAM like the dell with a lower graphics card or Better Graphics Like the Asus. 
Or the mid range HP that has the slower hard drive. 

Need some advice please.  Thanks!


 

I have purchased the full Hewnsman set - will upload in a few minutes to this post.

Posting now so that no one else buys it.  

Hewnsman set here

http://www.mediafire.com/?rqd2ndzy2tm

NOTE - Neither file has been ran through Pescado's wonder tool as I is retard and have not yet been able to figure out how it
works.  I did not see a RTFM but I could have missed it as I is retard.  

Ok I purchased the game last night and installed.  This morning I purchased a single hair file under the Adult category.
I installed via the launcher and the file ended up in Document/ElectronicArts/Thesims3/Downloads. 
Then I noticed that in CAS the hair I purchased under the Adult Catagorey (paid 100 pts.) Shows up for Teen, Young Adult, Adult and Elder.  So it doesn't appear as if you have to purchase each file seperatly.

Unfortunatly I do not have time to post file as I am going to be late for work messing around with this. 

Will try to post when I get home. It was the shorter choppy style (not the shortest style)

Thanks Lord Darcy for the alarmclock fix.   Looking at the rug again I do think it was intended as one of the other recolors available is the exact same outer patern but with an opaque middle. ( its black with some medallion looking thing).   

I have noticed that the clock which is catagorized under small electronics, is actually decorative only.   
I'm guessing it can be changed to be functional but I'm not sure how. 

Also the rug has 5 recolors.  All are nice but I'm not sure if this recolor was an oops or was intended to look like this.



The middle is missing so the floor shows.   It kind-of looks cool with the middle missing but is that what was intended?
The bookcase works with all the FT and AL functions. 

Here are all the buy/build objects with updated OBJD files so that they show up in game.

Whoops! Try this link to the fixed files:

http://www.mediafire.com/?yzmw4ntnmig