That isn't WA related I believe. It happened to me before when some parts of Riverview in the WorldCaches folder was accidentally deleted. Try reinstalling Riverview.

My post was not to address you personally, Cerridwen. Your thread is a good one to keep, I posted to help eliminate the others because there are people posting about this issue in several other areas of the site. So, I was addressing the others who posted in the thread, and watching. I do believe EA is going to have to release another patch to address the problems which is somewhat ridiculous- if this happens to people who bought the CD. Not sure if this problem of blue lots is only for those who have ARR'd it.

If you do remove your DCCache, I wonder also if the custom paterns even created by EA from the store would be causing issues.

Here is a small list of things for those who are too stupid to know otherwise before you try reinstalling things. You can't expect the new EP to work instantly with CC for a game never made at default to accept such things. If you want to test the new EP so badly, Remove tight pants before reporting problems! To do this a fresh reinstall would be best but if you want to be difficult:

First delete your monkey installer crap, resource.cfg and move your mods folder. Place backups elsewhere of the following files found in
My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/
- CASPartCache.package
- compositorCache.package
- simCompositorCache.package
- scriptCache.package
- userPresets.package (For those who don't know somehow, this contains all the recolors you made with CAST if you have custom patterns recolored saved in there, it can cause errors. Back it up and ship it out!)
- The DCCache folder has to go who knows what the hell you put it in- it's not going to work with the EP yet! (Looking at you TSR addicts!), back it up or anything installed with the launcher will be gone for good.

Now try seeing how it works with a new game (hood). Test. Stop making new threads. Seriously too many new threads of the same subject. To be expected I guess.

That kind of rebooting with no BSOD usually means overheating, if you have the event viewer service enabled it can probably tell you what caused it. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic40108.html

The new expansion if you can't tell by the hurricane of multiple posts about it in this section of the forum is ridden with problems at the moment and not compatible with AM or probably any previously made CC yet. You will likely have to start a new hood if you were using AM unless you wait and even then there are no guarantees. The BBS is crap don't take advice from there and I'd just wait for a new patch update if I were you, but do what you must.

I would not group the long saves with it being overpopulation only. There could be other reasons for them. My neighborhood has a population no greater than 20 sims and the save time takes 5 to 6 minutes. I believe it is bad custom content causing this. Attempting to removing it and reloading several times with a backup and saving the cc free hood resulted in the same amount of save time (5 minutes) as well with an incredibly long client load time (Almost 8 minutes from desktop to sunset valley). This leads me to believe a theory for once you have inserted some bad CC (or maybe even ANY cc/mods the game was not made to accept outside of the launcher installations of store items -such as default replacements) encounter this problem it may not be fixed without a fresh start of the hood, or even an entire reinstall of TS3. Unless someone else has produced a 10 minute client load and a 5 to 6 minute (or longer) save without any cc ever having been installed with a computer that is over or beyond the recommended system requisite.

Additionally, Awesomemod's config tool allows you to define which story progression method you want to use. To choose if you want to use EA's progression (with additional options), AwesomeStory, or IndieStone's Story Driver (No longer maintained, not supported here). It is also possible to configure to have no progression at all.

Some problems I encountered with s3rc hoping to receive some feedback. First, a "could not stat" message is sometimes appearing.
What does stat mean and what could be reasons for this message? I attempted to -d decompress some files previously run through s3rc because after compressing the file, they no longer appeared in game. It simply returned "Could not stat the .package file" and would not decompress it. I am using the latest version. Also, received this same error for trying to -s one of my save files. s3rc did appear to properly ensmallen -s on an alternative save file.

Another issue is occasionally the s3rc will eat a file. By eat, I mean it appears to be compressing then suddenly the file will be gone, deleted. There is no trace of it.  This occurred when attempting to compress some downloaded meshes.

Possibly try changing the directories to their full locations in resource.cfg and confirm they are readable/not hidden. This is just a wild guess though I don't know Vista, but the reason I can think of it could load only one mod is if it was in a different location than the below or the priority numbers are incorrect. Maybe post a copy here?

For example:
PackedFile Mods/Packages/*.package

Instead the entire address (fix this I am not sure)
PackedFile C:/Games/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Mods/Packages/*.package

Why don't you open the resource.cfg with notepad and read it?

If you don't want to reinstall the items you already installed with the launcher don't delete DCCache. Removing it will take them all out.

Yeah, extract the package files from the simspacks and put them directly in the packages folder.

I had this happen before, but I can't give you an answer I did the same thing. I will say though it happened to the entire household, yet other households in the same hood could still use the phone.

I noticed this a lot when I first started making sims with the modified sliders. When trying to removing pudding face I changed the jaw line, eye position and moved the mouths to match up better. In my earlier sims it resulted in this happening after birthdays:

This is not a sure test to see how much heat your computer may be generating inside. You should look up the temperature in BIOS. Since also maybe it only gets hot when you run graphic applications (maybe the graphics card is hot) try using a software program called SpeedFan to monitor all aspects while you run TS3. It is better if you can remove all non-necessary processes, startup items and services before hand. Your CPU should only be 0%-5% when you finish start up at desktop then.

If you want complete control on who lives and dies for the most part, start a new hood. Turn on TS2 style aging and remove the cribs from all the houses. Use destroy all humans command. Move in families. Then pollinate as you wish. Change aging if you want to now so only the elderly and the fortunate will die. Mark your household/person as sacred and they won't. I use Twallan's super computer to pollinate and AM has a command to form mass babby.

I want to download your lots but I don't have the rabbit hole signs downloaded. Since your site says the creator has pulled them is anyone willing to mediafire them?

Empty lots have never been an option to move-in in my game unless it has been edited and saved once

You can create a custom face texture for the children with new lips textured or create a new face mask/lipstick under makeup for overlay. Some people have already done new children faces with their skintones (look at Pudding Factory). There are custom lip makeup downloads but none that I know for children, this section isn't WCIF though so I can only answer your first question. You will need S3PE, DDS plugins for your photoshop client - MTS2 has a create section it is good to start there for tutorials.

Exactly my thoughts as well. The thought bubbles are lacking as well against TS2, where I loved to watch the bubbles to see what was going on. Now I can't tell what they're talking about, if it's even relevant.

This. Glad you got it to work. I'm not sure what you should do about installing .sims3pack though on mac. If possible maybe run them with 3viewer on windows and send the files to the mac with a flash drive or something.The launcher is really to be avoided, especially if you Arr'd the game. I know little snitch can block internet but the launcher also does not distinguish crap downloads at all, plus makes a huge bloat in unnecessary files. You should research/ learn about folder structures on Mac if you're going to continue using tons of CC so you can do things manually.

This post here explains how to modify resource.cfg (use Text edit to open it) to read your subfolders in /mods/
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,16851.msg490910.html#msg490910

Try modifying title of the thread to "Can not access options menu - (Mac User)" so more people will view this.

You realize this isn't just new recolors of the boots, but entirely new boots?

Nice site, looking forward to any future work you release.

Some creators are including resource.cfg files in their compressed files. You should check the contents of what exactly extracted before dumping it your folders. Extract .rar/.zip to a desktop folder and manually place them. That way nothing that you don't know about should sneak in.

Yes, and no for MTS downloads. Do not assume because it comes from MTS that it has been tested thoroughly; it varies from creator. I have downloaded things completely broken from MTS and had to go back to report to the creator. Then a creator had told me they did not intend on fixing their download right away so they removed it to abstain any effort. This creator continued to post new sets that also had the same texture, or broken meshes without taking any advice. This is very frustrating so I would not download from creators like this. But there are some amazing creators who constantly put quality work from MTS. I do frequently visit their page. It's a great site for keeping free content and help guides. The moderation process is not perfect. The use of the word mods as all in one was confusing in your questions, I don't understand how I made anything sound serious but it is irrelevant.

This is not always true for patterns. Custom patterns can worsen the memory leak problems in CAST mode on some systems.
Opening CAST and trying to change category/pattern colors becomes incredibly unresponsive and slow. Question marked tiles may show as a replace for broken or not loading patterns, errors in graphics can occur in CAS (skin/eye textures plastering to a body) and a system restart will be needed to fix the problem. Corrupted LOD files from hair meshes on sims within zoomed out camera view can crash the client, or hurt performance with incredibly bloated meshes see this thread about that.

If there was already a thread of this topic you probably were better to post there.

The word mod shouldn't be really applied to all your downloads-objects, meshes, xml mods or otherwise? It is too confusing to say that. Most of the kind of object you mentioned, isn't fully tested to begin with. Some of the creators names you also posted are using beta tools created by others freely (that are still being developed) sometimes without even fully testing their work, they release items that error your game. You can not expect to run 1000+ downloads from multiple creators (some who don't care but to only take money from fools) and not have errors. (Really, a thousand?) You already answered your own topic question, to sort this items manually to find the conflicting package.

Downloading all ''mods'' you could find from just anyone, you insist on keeping them is asking for conflicts. Modding had gone quickly for TS3, but it will never be supported to the full extent you could expect to have in TS2, for the most part working together harmoniously(if it did not have a global modification conflict).

Remove the tight pants or hold your breath trying to keep your drainpipes on?

Download for quality and know your game's/computer limit, just not understanding how people want so much crap in their game that it renders unplayable, then to ask why this happened to them.