Thanks.  I probably did get it from KotOR and KotOR II--they both use SecuROM 5 IIRC.

OK, I've got a question...

Santaroth tossed BV down my chimney today, and I happened to strongly suspect this would happen, so I've had the SecuROM removal tools, latest EA BV patch, many MATY game-fixing hacks, and the No-CD crack for BV v1.10.0.130 ready to go for a bit.

I've run into a bit of 'trouble' following the instructions.  After installing BV, I patched it, renamed the BV .exe, put the no-CD crack in its place, then directed all my shortcuts to it instead of the launcher.  The BV disc is now safely ensconced in its clamshell where it will never ever touch my computer again if I can help it--I haven't started the game from the regular .exe.  I tried the cracked .exe, game started fine, so I quit without playing and went onto the "kill SecuROM" steps.

I looked at my registry--SecuROM is there just as I expected it to be.  Running regdelnull this way: "C:\regdelnull HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SecuROM -s" and this way "regdelnull hkcu -s" gives me no results, says the scan is complete.  I did the same with "hku -s", scan turned up nothing.  "hklm -s" brought up a few, but none that were related to SecuROM, so I left them alone.

Doing the uaservice7 step predictably came back as being unable to be performed because I installed BV as an admin.  "regsvr32 /u cmdlineext.dll" did what it should.  Rebooted, deleted that .dll.  Went to the Documents and Settings step--found no folder for SecuROM anywhere.

Here's the question(s): Is this expected behavior?  I have a few other games that use much older versions of SecuROM (KotOR and KotOR II), so is it expected that the registries would be there but the rest wouldn't be?  Is it safe to wholesale delete the SecuROM registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER?  I can haz SecuROMless computer nao?

That takes getting coal in your stocking to a new level!

Gah.  I have one alien baby that was 'fathered' by Maxis' PT, and she is horrifying to behold.  Her ears are microscopic.  A friend pointed me toward a new set of PTs that still had an alien look but didn't have the epic fugly factor.  The two twins 'fathered' by one of the four new PTs are not bad at all.  I hope that the first alien baby doesn't pass on too much...

Tarlia, I do have a couple pictures of Santaroth:


I like to imagine the husband there isn't so much shocked by his new wife pouncing as he is stunned to have just caught sight of Santaroth.  My Sim Sephiroth amuses me to no end.

That drives me insane.  Enough that I went on a geneticizing and rebinning spree on almost all of the improperly binned hair and super dominant skintons and eyes I had.

I realized a bit late that I had Sims in-game who already had some of this content.  Ooops.  It hasn't done anything strange yet with the eyes, though I had a few incidents with skintones that I managed to fix with SimPE and a subsequent geneticizing spree to make them super dominant again so they don't get into the game unless I allow it (as with my Genetics Doom House).  The hair on the other hand was a totally different story...I have several Star Wars KotOR-based Sims, and one has a really funky hairdo that I didn't want inflicted on every daughter she had for all time.  But she was already in the game, carrying super dominant genes for custom hair that's now binned brown.  I could not have picked funnier results if I tried--a friend had done the same thing and her Sims were born bald, or ended up with the Maxis fried hair, but no, my game had to be cute and give her a daughter with lekku.  I have a perfect screenshot of dad holding up his girl just after she grew into a toddler, a stunned ZOMG expression on his face, blatant evidence of his wife cheating on him with a Twi'lek happily gurgling in his hands.

I believe I've fixed mom Sim so she's carrying genes for brown hair now so that doesn't happen again, but I just had to let that one stand.  That moment in Simming just edged out Sephiroth showing up at a wedding in a Santa suit as the funniest thing I've seen in my game.

Anyhow, good to know about the dominance of the alien skin, too, so I won't be caught off guard when the kiddies breed and some end up with human skin.

Hmm.  Didn't know an alien could be born with human eyes.  Thanks for the info--I can stop banging my head against my desk wondering what I did wrong!  I'll just stick contacts on him.

I do have the creaturefixes, though I don't think I'll use different alien default skins, at least not for a long time.  I've got some vampires in my game, so it's useful for that.

I'm using, IIRC, fwiffo's replacement PTs so that I no longer have to endure fugly as all hell alien babies.  I'm not sure this is related, however...

One of my Sims was abducted, and the poor guy had twin alien babies.  One of them was born with Maxis brown eyes and the other has plain old vanilla Maxis standard alien eyes.  Both have the standard Maxis alien skintone.  I've checked the brown-eyed alien boy in SimPE and he has the same eye and skintone genetics as his sister, who does have alien eyes.

Is there really anything that can be done about this?  I've tried editing his genetics so that he is recessive for alien eyes/skin, nary a human gene in sight, and he still shows up with brown eyes.  If I have to, I'll settle for sticking contacts on the kid, but I'd rather he behaved and showed his alien eyes.

Sadorandom...I like that word when I'm not being subjected to it!   But yeah, I feel lucky in an everything's going to blow up in my face soon anyway kind of way.  I did learn some important things tho', so when the inevitable occurs, I can avoid doing very bad things next time.

Alas, yes.  I backed up my entire "The Sims 2" folder and removed it from the "EA Games" folder, apparently that forces the game to rebuild the entire thing, so there was absolutely no custom content at all in it, just the game as it is when it's first started...and the beds, they do not work.  I won't say that *none* of the beds work, but I've tried a dozen of them in several lots in three neighborhoods, so I'm pretty confident this is a global problem.  I tried to narrow down the issue in several configurations, whittling it down from custom content problems to possible other problems in my game's user data, until I appear to be left with nothing but the game itself, and beds are still borked.

Right now I'm pretty well resigned to having to reinstall the blasted game (I have NL, Uni, Seasons, and Celebration Stuff, but none were installed recently), and, while annoying, that's do-able...I am really concerned that if I restore my backed up data, it will break the game again, since now I know that moving occupied lots into a game is Very Very Bad.  I did have InSIM and FFS Debugger (but not debug mode) active when this happened, but it does pretty well boggle my mind imagining that either of them would corrupt the game itself.  Potentially blow up my Sims, yeah, but not the actual game!  So...I don't know at this point if I need to nuke just the game, or all of my Sims as well.  I'd rather try the potentially very tedious task of fixing my neighborhoods if I just happened to be unlucky and some game system data got corrupted.  Figure they need some repair work anyway.

jennydee, I did try something like that, thinking that some of the beds got glitched, but it wasn't that.  Glad it worked for you though, and it's something I'll keep in mind if anything starts acting up like that.

EDIT: ARGH.  I have no clue why this worked, but I just went back in with all my custom content just as it was, for a final check--it appears that it was a lot that had glitched, as when I entered it in debug mode, all the residents were reset and now the beds work on all lots when they didn't before.

This game can be so frustratingly random.  Anyhow...*headdesk*  It works now...so...never mind.

Basically, Sims who attempt to use beds, just normal, unmodded beds, can only use beds to Relax on initially.

I've tried pretty much everything that ModTheSims2 suggest in searching for a reason for this bizarre problem, including having the game recreate the entire The Sims 2 folder from scratch.  I am thinking that an obvious solution would be to raze my Sims installs and then reinstall the game and expansions.

But then, I looked around on this board and found that I had committed great evil by packaging an occupied lot on another computer, sticking it on my USB drive, then teleporting it to the current computer.  Knowing now that this is a very very bad thing to do, I wondered if it was possible that it is SUCH a very bad thing to do that it would indeed cause my actual game to explode.

I'm also wondering if it is fixable, if my teleported occupied lot destroyed my game, or if there is another fixable reason that the game, lacking all mods and hacks, would still have this issue.  I'm willing to put in the effort to try to repair this and save my Sims from fiery death if possible.

If it did happen because of the teleported lot, it happened fast--about a Sim week.

If it's not possible to fix and rescue my Sims, I'll accept that, but I figured I'd better ask before I try reinstalling the game and then farking it all to hell again by restoring my backed up files.