I have a fairly old version of Winzip, 8.1, and one of the several options when you right-click on an archive file is Extract to Here. You can also simply open the archive file (WinZIp supports several formats) in Winzip and drag the files you want into any directory in Windows Explorer.

I myself didn't like WinRAR and uninstalled it. It wasn't so much the function of the app as 1) the way it took over the file assocation for all the achive types on my machine—the original poster's "problem"—and 2) its file icons in Windows Explorer are butt-ugly. This is going to put me well outside the MATY mainstream, but I use an older version of StuffIt (an archive format used mostly by Mac users) for RAR files since I already had it. Perhaps WinRAR doesn't do this, but I find with StuffIt if I choose more than three or four RAR files to expand at once (right-click, choose Expand) the app chokes after the first few and won't do the rest. I have yet to find a limit to how many Zip archives I can unpack with a single command using WinZip—more than is convenient, probably.

Regarding shareware:  All the shareware I have encountered expects you to pay or delete after the trial period, even though not all shareware apps enforce this by disabling themselves. This is the difference between shareware and freeware. Ad-Aware Personal and AVG Free Edition, for example, are freeware as long as you don't use them in a business or institutional setting, whereas WinZip, StuffIt, LView Pro, and Vuescan are shareware programs—you can use them or their trial versions for free for a limited time, and distribute the files ("share" them) with anyone, but you are expected to pay for the software if you intend to keep and use it.

If a shareware app is something you're only going to use once or twice for a particular purpose, then use it for free by all means. If it is something you are going to use on an ongoing and regular basis, you should pay for it (they usually cost less than TS2 and its EPs, anyway, so if you can afford the game and the hardware to run it on, you can afford the shareware).

Neither good nor bad, really. Are you satisfied with the game performance? The limiting factors on your frame rates (how smoothly the game runs, especially when you move the "camera") and the number of sims you can have on a lot are probably:

1. The video card. The Radeon 9700 Pro isn't really old, but it's not new either, and a video card with current technology and with 256 MB of video memory would probably give you a significant performance boost and let you turn up the detail settings--for example, are you currently using Reflections On?

HOWEVER, looking at the system specs for you computer, it may be that the power supply will not support a modern video card, since it is rated for only 220 Watts:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?dlc=en&lc=en&product=94088&dest_page=product&cc=us&docname=c00009568

2. System memory. Increasing system RAM from 768 MB to 1024 MB might give you a noticeable increase in performance by allowing more game data to reside in RAM instead of needing to be fetched from the hard drive. In combination with this, changing your virtual memory from Windows controlled to something like Initial:  100, Maximum 800 could improve performance by reducing the amount of data Windows sends out to the paging file. (See my looong posts in the Graphics Card thread for screen shots of how to do this). 

3.  CPU:  Upgrading to a faster CPU would also give a noticeable performance boost, perhaps even more than increasing system RAM—this is something you will only know by trying. Maxis provides minimum requirements but not an optimum system configuration. Since your computer is a Compaq, it probably has a proprietary motherboard which was likely made by Intel. Again, looking at the system specs for PCs in this series:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodinfoCategory?dlc=en&lc=en&product=94088&dest_page=product&cc=us&

it appears it may not be possible to use a CPU faster than 2.2 GHz in your computer, or a CPU that runs on a 533 MHz front-side bus—and I think it would be difficult to find a 2.2 GHz Willamette P4 (1.75V) CPU these days, or even a 2.2 GHz Northwood P4 (1.5V), and if you could it would probably cost more than the performance increase would be worth.

If your motherboard would accept a 2.8 GHz Northwood P4 that runs on a 400 MHz front-side bus, it might be worth the upgrade, but then again it might not:  I just bought for my mother for Christmas an HP Pavilion with an Athlon 64 3400+, 1024MB RAM, an 80 GB SATA hard drive, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, keyboard and mouse, and WinXP Home, for 500 USD plus shipping, which is probably less than it would cost to upgrade the CPU, memory, power supply, hard drive, and operating system of an old PC (the model year for your Presario 6027US is 2002--it is nearly four years old). Granted, the HP has integrated graphics (ATi Xpress), but if you were to get something like this, you could always stick your Radeon 9700 in it (you would probably need to go into the BIOS setup to disable the integrated graphics).

Sorry! It wasn't intended to be long when I started, but I like to write, and, well, you now how it is. . . .

Anyway, let me take this opportunity to add just this:

Ditch Win98 and get WinXP (preferably XP Pro)—it is a huge improvement over 98/98SE/ME. You (speaking generally) can get it for relatively cheap (compared to the full retail price) when you by some internal component from one of the reputable mail-order dealers—a motherboard, CPU, hard drive, or video card, for example.

Home-built:

PC Power & Cooling Silencer power supply, 420W
Intel D845PESV motherboard, 533 MHz FSB
P4 2.8 GHz Northwood (the fastest CPU this mobo will take)
1024 MB RAM (Crucial, standard grade)
3 36-GB U160 SCSI hard drives w/Adaptec 29160N SCSI controller
2 Plextor SCSI optical drives, one CD reader and one CD-RW
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 (connected to an old receiver and a decent pair of speakers by an Audioquest iPod-to-stereo cable--sounds good!)
MSI Radeon 9800 Pro w/128 MB DDR RAM (256-bit memory interface) - AGP
Logitech MX510 mouse
Tandberg Travan NS20 Pro SCSI tape drive (not really relevant I suppose--but it does draw power)

This was adequate for TS2 original and okay for NL, but it's showing significant lag with Uni installed--video settings include Smooth Edges at about the half-way point, Reflections on, Texture Detail at Medium (all changed from what the game recommended), lot view (or whatever it's called) at Small. I could turn down some of these settings and get better frame rates, but the game looks really good with the greater detail at my LCD monitor's native resolution (1280x1024)--although it would probably look better on a good CRT. Just yesterday I received a Radeon X800GT that I hoped would be an upgrade, bur right out of the box it produced significant display corruption, when I tried to load a lot in TS2 the whole screen when to hell, so I need to send it back.

In short, I find this configuration barely adequate for TS2 with the expansions, knowing what the game can look like.

Let's talk principles instead of specific components. And let's start with that glamourous item, the power supply. To be blunt, the power supplies that come with most pre-built systems are crap. And if you're going to load up a new or rebuilt machine with a hot new motherboard and CPU, a high-power video controller (even the Radeon 9800 Pro requires its own power connection), a couple fast HDDs, a CD-RW and a DVD burner, that POS 300W power supply isn't going to cut it. Get yourself a quality power supply rated for at least 450W from a reputable manufacturer (PCP&C are the best, but the top Antec models are okay). Pay particular attention to the regulation, and don't settle for anything worse than ±5% on any of the + voltage lines ("rails")--±1% is preferred, and ±3% is acceptable. Inadequate power can lead to graphics corruption, spontaneous reboots, and worse. Power output declines as temperature increases, and the cheap power supplies can't supply their nominal rated power at normal operating temperatures.

Plus, with a quality power supply, you'll get a quality power-supply fan, one that is less likely to fail and cause your PC to catch fire, probably in the middle of night, thus burning down your house. This is no joke, and something for those of you who run your PC 24/7 to consider. I used to know a Web site with photos of burned PCs, but you just can't find anything useful with a Google search anymore. With a new power supply, you can get dedicated SATA power connectors for your new SATA hard drives. 

CPU choice comes down to a price/performance calculation, and whether you want to buy a new motherboard (recommended if you current one is more than a couple years old, since you'll need Socket 939 for AMD or Socket 775 for Intel). AMD vs. Intel?  Take your pick. In benchmark testing, AMD wins some and Intel wins some. AMD is currently the big winner for gaming, while Intel still wins for some high-intensity image and video processing. It once was the case that Athlons were hot and P4s cost more, but these days the Intel chips are hotter and the upper-end Athon 64s cost more than equivalent Intel CPUs. Intel has an advantage by supplying its own chipsets for its CPUs, while AMD relies on third-party suppliers with an uneven track record of stable products. Athon CPUs gain a performance advantage by having the memory controller on the chip, but this restricts you to DDR for now while the Intel CPUs have large on-board L2 caches and can use the most current RAM technology, DDR2 (if the motherboard supports it). This could provide a cost advantage to AMD.

The most value for money in a CPU is usually found a couple steps down from the current top of the line. In this particular instance, you're probably better off not going for that next-higher model for just a few $$$ more--use the money instead for the next-higher model graphics board, which should probably give you a bigger performance boost in TS2. You shouldn't need an after-market heatsink/fan (or water cooling) if you don't plan on overclocking the CPU. For TS2 and most (all??) other games, a dual-core processor is uneccessary as the game won't take advantage of the second core in any significant way, if at all. But if you use some other apps like Photoshop a lot, a dual-core CPU might be worth the premium price--you would need to see which apps you use can take advantage of the dual cores.

Graphics board/video controller:  Get the best you can afford (although a $500 model is probably overkill). Make sure you have room for the cooling aparatus, since the heatsink/fan assembly on most current upper-end models will block the adjacent PCI slot. If you're buying a new motherboard, make sure it has PCI Express instead of AGP, and get a PCI-Express video board (fortunately, the PCI-E boards are slightly less expensive than their AGP counterparts). DON'T buy a reduced-performance OEM or "SE" model to save money--these are usually low-performance versions of the retail boards, made for the big manufacturers like Dell and HP. You are going to want at least 256 MB of DDR3 memory with a 256-bit memory interface. Be sure you will have a spare power connector for the card.

RAM:  1024MB, or more if you can afford it (but only after getting the power supply and video card). Don't get the cheap no-name stuff--there is a difference, so stick with quality brands like Crucial, Corsair, OCX, and Kingston. In the US you can buy Crucial direct at decent prices. You probably don't need the varieties with platinum heat spreaders and LEDS unless you're planning on overclocking your memory.

Hard drives:  If your motherboard has serial ATA connectors (SATA), then by all means get SATA drives, preferably ones that have a native SATA interface and implement command queuing. Many SATA drives on the market, especially older models, are really just parallel ATA drives with a SATA connector added. Two drives are better than one! Given a choice, take two smaller drives over one large drive. Any version of Windows will work better if you can put the paging file at the beginning of a separate physical drive from the one on which Windows is installed. With SATA drives, I believe each motherboard connector will accept only one drive, so multiple drives on a channel isn't an issue (and shouldn't be anyway with a serial device), so you would have each HDD on its own cable, and your optical drives on a separate IDE channel (another advantage of SATA, as many motherboards with plain old IDE connectors provide only two channels). Even if you have parallel drives, try to have each drive on its own cable, and don't an optical drive on the same cable as a hard drive (double up the HDDs on one cable if you have to). Avoid 5400-RPM drives--7200 or 10K (Western Digital's Raptor drives) are the way to go. Be sure to get an on-board cache of at least 8 MB.

Motherboards:  PCI Express instead of AGP, Gigabit Ethernet, Serial ATA, three fan headers (instead of one), and enough PCI slots for everything you might stick in your PC while leaving room for Slot 1 to be blocked by the graphic card's heatsink. RAID is an unnecessary luxury, but having plenty of SATA connectors as well as the standard two IDE connectors is not.

Sound Card:  A SoundBlaster Audigy 2 will still sound better than any onboard audio, and because it has its own DSP, it takes the audio load off the CPU.

If you're going to buy a new case, it's better to have one that's bigger than you need than one that is too small. And a large case should ventilate better. Look for a case that's well-finished inside (no sharp edges), has sufficent drive bays for everything you want to install (including the breakout box for your new high-end SoundBlaster), and offers good air movement. An extra fan in the front and two in the back can be valuable. A 120 mm fan will move the same amount of air as an 80 mm fan but at a lower speed, hence less noise.

And finally—


Doh. This may have been true for the original game, but I've just done a complete re-install of all three packages, and at least with NL 1280x1024 is an option in the video settings--and it sure does look great!   

Here are a couple screen shots to indicate the results of my paging file settings. As you can see, 130 MB of the used RAM is the disk cache.


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Well, this is certainly not the only solution, but I use a setting of 100 MB minimum and 800 MB maximum, and it works well for me (also with 1 gig RAM). I don't remember how I came to use these settings, although they may have been recommended by the Cacheman program I mentioned earlier.These settings should work well in conjunction with a reduced disk cache (data from your hard drive stored in RAM for fast access) in order to minimize the amount of data-swapping WinXP does (this can be set using a registered version of Cacheman, which I don't have--the feature-limited version is free to use without registering). Also, I turn off my anti-virus program before running the game, which significantly increases the game's performance.

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Lol! Isn't that what these forums (fora?) are for? Plus, there's no one here to talk to. . . .

This is what we would expect if you've got a current mid- to upper-level video card.


Well, that's all I have myself, so I really can't say. Generally speaking, some apps can use more memory that others. Assuming you're running WinXP, you could probably go to 2gig and see what happens (if you ever run Photoshop, it will be happy to use the extra RAM even if TS2 won't). Older versions of Windows are reported to run into problems with large amounts of RAM--I think 512 MB was the limit for Win98.

What kind of hard drive(s) do you have? If you have an older 7200-rpm ATA drive with a small onboard buffer (2 MB or less), you could probably gain some loading speed by upgrading to a new model, either a 7200-rpm drive with an 8- or 16-MB buffer, or a 10K-rpm drive. If your motherboard has a serial ATA controller, upgrading from an old parallel ATA (IDE) drive to a new SATA drive could also improve load times. One other thing to check is whether your hard drive(s) and optical drives are connected to the same IDE (ATA) channel, which can slow down the hard drive's performance (although you can run two drives on each channel, IDE is still a one-drive interface, so with two drives connected, one has to wait if the other is transferring data--and having a CD drive on the same cable as a hard drive can really be a drag on performance).

Ideally, you would have your hard drive by itself on one IDE channel, and the optical drive(s) on the second channel (if you have two IDE hard drive connectors on your motherboard, each is one channel, to which you can attach two drives in parallel, for a total of four drives). If you have two hard drives, it is best to have each on its own channel if at all possible. Some more recent motherboards have three or four IDE connectors, so you can give two hard  drives their own channel each, and connect the optical drives to the third and/or fourth connector.

It's actually pretty straight-forward. First, in the ATi Control Panel, make sure that for Direct 3D Anti-Aliasing is set for Application Preference--regardless of whether you want to use edge smoothing in game or not. You do this by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Properties from the menu. In the Display Properties window that appears, the 3D settings are accessed by pressing the Advanced button on the Settings tab. For an example of reliable settings, see the attached image.

Whether you choose to use Edge Smoothing (anti-aliasing) in your game is up to you. It all comes down to how smoothly the game runs--more specifically, how smoothly does the "camera" move when you change your angle of view. In other words, it's all about frame rates. Your X850XT should have enough horsepower to run with all--or nearly all--the game settings maxed, but whether any loss of performance that does occur is acceptable to you, only you can decide. You will not hurt anything by turning on Edge Smoothing in-game, but if you feel it reduces the performance of the game, you can always turn it off. The important part is to be sure that anti-aliasing for your video card is not forced on, by setting it to Application Preference in Display Properties.

Motoki is correct:  As Maxis poiints out, enabling Smooth Edges can have a major affect on game performance. If you have an older video card or a budget card, you may find the performance hit to not be worth the improved appearance of game objects. OTOH, with a current mid- or upper-range card like the X850XT, this should not be a problem. YMMV? Absolutely!

Load times are a different issue, involving the speed of your hard drive system, the amount of data a particular lot contains (i.e., large lots take longer to load), and to some extent the speed or your CPU. The display settings in the game won't affect load time one way or the other. They only affect how smoothly the game runs once the lot is loaded.

Setting a high display resolution can have an affect on game performance, but it is an issue independent of anti-aliasing (although there is some interaction in terms of how the display image looks). The choice of resolution is a compromise between apparent image sharpness, readability (everything gets small!) and game performance. The highest setting isn't necessarily the best. Pick the resolution that looks best to you, on your hardware. Keep in mind that if you are using an LCD monitor, it has only one "correct" resolution, called its native resolution. 17- and 19-inch monitors typically have a native resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, and any other setting will require the monitor to either invent pixels ("interpolation") for lower resolutions, because the monitor needs to fill in the missing pixels--or discard pixels for higher resolutions, because the monitor doesn't have as many pixels as it is being asked to display. Unfortunately for me, TS2 doesn't offer 1280x1024 as an option, but it looks surprisingly good at whatever the next lower resolution is--1150x???--I don't have the game open at the moment and I don't remember the exact resolution options. In any event, this isn't issue with CRT monitors.

According to the Read Me file, it is possible to force a resolution with a command-line switch, -r(w)x(h) [run at (w) x (h) resolution]. I haven't tried it but it might be worth an experiment. You would use this by opening the Properties window of your game shortcut and adding the line to the end of the existing Target line. In my case, I would add -r1280x1024 to the end of the line, "D:\Games\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSBin\Sims2EP2.exe", like so:
"D:\Games\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSBin\Sims2EP2.exe" -r1280x1024
In truth, I don't remember at the moment whether the switch goes inside the quotation marks, but I think it does not.

Of course, if your game is installed in C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Nightlife, then your Target line would be different from mine.




 

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This may be stating the obvious (or the already-known, take your pick), but I'm going to do it anyway. There are two types of custom skins:  one type overrides the default skin on a per-sim basis and is only in effect when you use it when creating a sim. The other type is the Default skin, which replaces the Maxis skins for every sim in the game with that particular skin type. Therefore, it is important to have only one Default skin installed at a time for each skin type. In other words, have only one Default adult female tan skin, one teen male dark skin, etc. So if you have Duddy's default skins installed, you should not also have the Paradise defaults or any other defaults.

Some skinners make both default and non-default versions of their skins, and you can have all the non-default skins you like, since these only affect those sims for which you have used that particular skin. The non-default skins override the default skins . . . so if you have Duddy's default skins installed, and then create a sim using, for example, one of Allan Akbar's skins, you are in effect overriding the Maxis default twice--once with the Duddy skin and then again with the Akbar skin.

There was also in this thread a question about whether the Clean Installer really does disable files. The Clean Installer deactivates a file by changing the file extension from .package to .off so the game will not recognize it as a game file.

I have some experience with this since I was missing a bunch of lots from some of my downtowns and had to transfer them from the one intact downtown I did have (although one downtown has invalid entries for N3rD Pad and Liliflower--???). Just package the lots you want to duplicate and install them by double-clicking the packaged-lot file. This will make them available as lots that may be placed in neighborhood view. Go to the downtown where you want to place the customized lot, bulldoze the old lot, and place the customized one.

In the original game, you needed to move packaged lots out of the Packaged Lots folder (and perhaps even out of the My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 folder altogether) or you would only be able to place them once, but I've read somewhere that this is no longer necessary. I move my packaged lots to an archive folder anyway, just to be safe.

This is more cleanly done if you have the Clean Installer, since you can then specify to install just the lot file. With the Maxis default package installer, any custom content, hacks, etc. that get scooped up with the lot will be reinstalled with _0001 appended to the file name (instead of simply overwriting the existing file--doh!), resulting in duplicate files. For example, if you've used the wall from file wall_2ee2f041.package in your customized lot, it will be reinstalled by the Maxis package installer, and you will now have this file and also wall_2ee2f041_0001.package. With the Clean Installer, you can choose to install just the lotSegmentForUpload and leave out all the recolors, sims, clothing, makeup, hair, skin tones, and all the other stuff that gets packaged with your lot--you have all that stuff in your game already.

Let's see if we can sort some of this out. . . .

The ATi 9200-series cards are several generations old--roughly concurrent with the Pentium III (remember those?). Without getting into technical details, they are by current standards short on on-board memory (although there is a 256-MB option for the 9250), have only four pixel pipelines (compared to 8 or 12 with current designs), and support only DirectX 8 in hardware. If the card has only 64 MB of memory, it is possible that manually forcing some game settings may simply be ignored (although I don't know if this is true or not).

Also, it is important to recognize that it is not just the quantity of memory, but the type. The 9200 cards use single-channel DDR memory, while current cards typically use dual-channel or quad-channel DDR3, which (again not getting into the technical aspects) is considerably faster for a given quantity--in other words, 128 MB of dual-channel DDR3 will significantly out-perform 128 MB of DDR.

A year ago, the bare minimum if you were to buy a new card would be a Radeon 9550, which at least gets you to DirectX 9 in hardware (I won't discuss nVidia here because I'm not familiar with their models, having avoided their products because of the company's long history of having brutally bad image quality when you're not gaming, although this may no longer be the case). But prices for the 9600 XT have dropped dramatically, so that now you can find one with 256 MB memory for less than 100 USD.  For ~170 USD, I would have thought I'd be looking for a 9800 Pro with 256 MB of memory, but I see that at this very moment, I can get an AGP version of the Radeon X800GT with 256 MB of DDR3 memory for $169 plus $5 shipping (in the U.S.) made by Sapphire (one of ATi's principle 3rd-party builders). 

I was making the same decision myself some months back, between the 9600 XT and the 9800 Pro, and ended up with the 9800 with 128 MB memory, since at the time the 9800 was the better value given the relatively small price difference. The 9800 is a more advanced design all around, for this particular use it is especially notable for having a 256-bit memory interface compared to 128-bit for the 9600 cards (however, watch out for budget OEM versions of the 9800--SE versions, for example--which also have the 128-bit interface). That said, the source I'm looking at (newegg) lists the Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro with 256 MB DDR2 at exactly the same price as the considerably newer X800GT with 256 MB DDR3--in fact, at that price I may just order the X800GT myself.

This version of the X800 is near the bottom of the model line, at least as far as AGP versions go (be careful not to get a PCI-Express version if you need AGP!), so except for faster GPU and memory-clock speeds, and the DDR3 (quad-channel?), this card doesn't seem much different from the 9800 Pro, as both have 8 pixel pipelines, but I suspect the X800 is considerably more capable in real-life applications (i.e., TS2). And for just $20 more, the same source has "refurbished" units of the next-higher model, with 12 pixel pipelines. Let's see, I get paid tomorrow. . . .

So there you have it:  On a tight budget, a Radeon 9600 XT with 256 MB RAM (again, watch out for those handicapped OEM versions) is probably the minumum. Any lesser card (that is, one of even older technology) is not a good value for the money with the 9600 XT selling for less than 100 USD. If you can hit the 170 USD range, the sweet spot for 256-MB AGP cards is going to be the Radeon X800GT, at least here in the U.S., or the Radeon Pro if the X800 cards are premium-priced in your market.

Okay, so let's talk about swap files, also known as the paging file. In the old days when your typical PC had 64 or 128 MB of RAM, the common wisdom was to set your swap file for 2.5 times your physical memory. This was necessary because both applications and Windows itself would quickly swamp your onboard memory, so it was necessary to page out idle data to the hard drive in order to make things work. These days, with PCs typically having 512 MB or more of RAM, this advice is no longer pertinent. If anything, the best course of action is to reduce your paging file as much as is practical, in order to minimize the amount of disk-churning Windows can do, and maximize the use of your physical memory.

Despite improvements, WinXP is still rather dumb when it comes to managing memory. If you let it configure itself, it will keep the page file almost full while using well less than half the available physical memory, especially if you have more than 512 MB installed. To compound the problem, WinXP has two data-management "features" that work at cross-purposes. On the one hand, it sets up a disk cache, which moves data on disk into RAM on a predictive basis, in order to speed up access to that data when it's needed. On the other hand, it is constantly moving idle data in RAM to the paging file on your hard drive to free up RAM--you can see the problem here. In addition, with 512 MB or more of RAM, most of that data doesn't need to be swapped out to the paging file to free up physical memory, because you're probably nowhere close to using it up. As I write this, my paging file is currently at 55 MB (it's about 7 MB when I first start WinXP), and I have 541 MB of free RAM (out of 1024 MB). If I let WinXP do its thing, these numbers might be reversed!

Secrets of the paging file:  With all versions of Windows, it is best if you have two physical hard drives, and the swap file configured to be on the second drive--that is, the one that does not contain Windows (which is usually drive C). With older versions, it was sufficient to simply set the swap file to drive D (or whatever), but with XP (and possibly Win2K??), the paging file process works best if there is a small paging file on the Windows drive as well as the main paging file on the other drive (of course, if you have only one physical hard drive, this is irrelevant, but you can still reduce the size of your paging file). I currently have the C drive paging file set to 2-50 MB (min-max) and the drive E paging file set to 100-800--this is a bit different that what I have on a Win98SE system, where the paging file is set to a fixed amount of (I believe) around 128 MB. There is a way to determine an optimum setting for your particular use by using the Performance Logs feature of XP to test different settings while producing the most memory-intensive loads you can manage (like loading a really big TIF into Photoshop while editing a long document in Word and loading up a big Excel worksheet), but if you poke around the more reliable tweaking Web sites I think you'll come up with settings similar to mine, for WinXP. The settings I use produce a minimum of disk thrashing (data being sent out to the paging file) while taking advantage of the RAM I've bought. The bottom line is that if you have 512 MB or more of RAM and Windows spends a lot of time sending data to and from your hard drive, you should seriously consider reducing the size of your swap file (aka paging file).

There are a lot of junk utilities and performance "enhancers" out there on the Web. One that actually works and does not hose your PC is Cacheman (cache manager--get it?), which may be found here:  http://www.outertech.com/

Edge smoothing and anti-aliasing: 


Without getting into a long discussion, suffice it to say that edge smoothing reduces the "jaggies" along the straight edges of surfaces (or lines) when they are viewed/displayed at an angle. For example, you are looking at a table in your game. If your point of view is square to the table, the edges of the table top will appear smooth and straight. If you rotate your view 45 degrees, you will see that the edges of the table top are no longer smooth and straight, but take on something of a stairstep appearance. Anti-aliasing or edge-smoothing will reduce this effect, which some people find more objectionable than do others.

Modern video cards with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in hardware allow you to set or force these settings in their driver software. Forcing these settings is popular with hardware junkies, "extreme" gamers, and reviewers, but is often not a good idea. The ATi control panel gives you the choice (using Custom settings) of setting the display driver to Application Preference for these functions for both Direct 3D and Open GL, and this is usually a good safe choice. Games which can benefit from having these functions turned on, or set to particular values, are often able to set the settings themselves.

In the case of TS2, in the Read Me file that comes with the game (you did read this, right??!), Maxis explicity states not to turn on anti-aliasing for ATi cards:

FORCED ANTI-ALIASING: The Sims 2 will have graphical problems if anti-aliasing is forced on in display properties. To fix this:
   * Right click on your windows desktop and select Properties.
   * Choose the Settings tab and press the Advanced button.
   * Select the 3D tab and make sure SmoothVision is set to Application Preference.
   * If not, press the Custom... button and change the anti-aliasing setting to Application Preference.

If you want edge smoothing in TS2, turn it on using the game options. If you have the horsepower, you shouldn't have a problem, but if you have it enabled and your game seems sluggish, try turning it off. Again, according to the Read Me file:

Reflections, Screen Size, and Smooth Edges are the options that will affect your frame rate the most, followed by Shadows and Lighting.


With my system (P4 2.8 Northwood, 1024 MB RAM, MSI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB), the game installation defaults to Reflections off and some other settings set to medium. I run with Reflections on and most Details settings set to high, and don't really have a problem except for large lots with lots of objects and sims--for example, 8 sims in the Capp mansion with a third storey added, or busy Downtown lots. But I live with it because I like reflections and some game features and/or objects require details set to high in order to work properly (or be seen)--although I don't recall which ones at the moment. 

The Read Me file also lists known problems with older ATi cards, most of which are due to old drivers. (Not to worry, there are GForce problems too.)   

Hope this helps. . . .

Okay, I know this is an old post, but I thought I'd make this observation since no one else did.

The neighborhood images displayed in the neighborhood chooser are simply 400x300 PNG files that reside in each neighborhood's folder in the Neighborhoods folder in My Documents>. . . . The grid thing is just a placeholder that displays in the absence of a proper image for the neighborhood. If a terrain you download comes with an image file you can use that (use an image-editor to change it to PNG format if necessary) by renaming it N00x_Neighborhood.png, where x is the number of the neigborhood, and moving it into the appropriate Neighborhood folder.

You can use any image you want—an in-game aerial view of the neighborhood, snaps of your sims, whatever. If you're a Photoshop wiz, you could do something with fade effects that shows your sims against a background of the aerial view, or use some other tool to make the motion views that come with the Maxis neighborhoods (I have no idea how to do that). For a static image, just make it 400x300 and you're good to go.

It may be possible to use a BMP or JPG file without converting to PNG, but since the Maxis image files are PNG, I just make the conversion and have never tried using an image in another format.

Like nectere said, these are duplicate files. They could be objects or recolors; in your Downloads folder they have different files names (which you can see if you hold the cursor over the item's name in the Clean Installer), but their MD5 checksums are the same. If you click on the MD5 column heading, the files will sort by checksum and the duplicates will be next to each other. You can decide which you want to keep--the one with an actual file name or the one with the TS2 string of numbers and letters as a file name. 

As for isolating the bad hack(s), the most thorough and most tedious method would be to take them all out, reinstall the game, and then put them back in a few at a time until the game breaks again, and do another game reinstall and  reinstall your hacks except for the problem ones. I can't say I would recommend that, though.

You might start by reading through the list of older hacks and their compatibilities (really just a compilation of the RTFMs) in the Hack Directory - All Hacks thread in The Armory (scan the thread until you find the group of posts by gali that lists them in alpha order). The files aren't linked there, but you can use the list as a cross-reference for the files in the FFS Director's Cut download in the same forum. In my case, I used the phonehack from the Director's Cut, which turned out to be the wrong one (they have the same file name). The file date for the phonehack.package for the original game is 2.6.2005.

I think if you stick to the hacks that are listed as compatible with the original game in the Hack Directory - All Hacks thread, you should be alright.

 Um, I actually don't remember if I tried to delete/sell the phones, but I have a vague memory that perhaps I did. It is the sort of thing I would typically try. I have all of about three downloaded houses, all of which I got the first week I had the game installed (I like to build my own), which was well before I installed the incorrect phonehack. I run the Clean Installer fairly regularly, and I've never seen any mystery hacks. And when I did the reinstall, the only file I had removed was that Uni phonehack, and the game has worked fine ever since--with the correct phonehack. As it happens, NL arrived today, so we shall see how it goes from here. . . .

But these are good suggestions.


 I wasn't thinking it was necessarily the phonehack itself, as your symptoms aren't quite the same as mine--in my case, the sims couldn't interact with the phones at all, on any lot. Although, I too had a fairly new version of the phonehack and it was the wrong one for the original game. I was thinking that in more general terms it seems that some hacks for Uni can damage one or more files in the original game, such that removing the hack doesn't fix the problem. In truth, this is just an inference based on my experience, but if you have a corrupted game file, simply removing the hack that caused the problem will not fix it.

It may be that your problem is caused by one of the other Uni hacks you installed (there seems to have been several?). I didn't really make it clear in my previous post that what I was suggesting was a reinstall after you had located and removed all the Uni and/or NL hacks--otherwise you would just recreate the problem. I just sort of assumed that you'd already done that, but when writing on the Internet it's always a good idea to be really clear about what you're saying.

Similarly, I wasn't real clear about which Neighborhood folders to back up.  As you may already know, your saved games are made up of the collection of files in the various neighborhood subfolders in the Neighborhoods folder in the same The Sims 2 folder as your Downloads folder (in My Documents). There is also a Neighborhoods subfolder in the The Sims 2 folder where you installed the game itself, typically Program Files>EA Games>The Sims 2 (assuming you're running Windows)--these are the default neighborhoods, and are not the ones that need to be backed up. There are four Neighborhood folders in the game installation location:  001, 002, 003, and Tutorial. The neighborhoods you actually play (copies of the defaults) and custom neighborhoods (004, 005, etc.) are in the Neighborhoods folder in the My Documents location.

In the same The Sims 2 folder in My Documents, the Sims you create in CAS are in the SavedSims folder, so you want to back those up also.

Now, when I did my reinstall, I copied these folders rather than moving them before uninstalling the game. It's been a while now, but I don't think the uninstall routine actually deletes the EA Game folder in My Documents. I don't remember whether or not I had to copy the Neighborhoods and SavedSims back after the reinstall (I don't want to give any misleading advice!). This makes sense if you think about it:  In Windows, if you have several user accounts on your PC, you don't need to install the game separately for each user--just be sure the shortcuts for the game are in the Start Menu for All Users rather than for just one user. Each user will have his or her own My Documents>EA Games>The Sims 2 folder, including Downloads and Neighborhoods, and so can have completely different saved games and custom content. I'm guessing the uninstall program can only "see" the My Documents folder of the account that's logged on, and (I'm still guessing) it doesn't try to remove the TS2 folders in My Documents.

Basically, the game stores the default files in its installation folders, and copies them into the My Documents directories of each user account when a user runs the game for the first time from that account.

But it's always a good idea to be safe, and back up everything! I just want to be clear about which folders need, or may need, to be copied to a safe place.

I should probably shut up now.

My own experience was that inadvertently installing the wrong version of the phonehack (Uni version in original, patched game) broke the game. The phones no longer worked--Sims could not use them even though they rang--and Sims developed a tendency to jump from place to place. Removing the hack did not fix the problems.

Reinstalling the game and the patch fixed the problem. Fortunately, I was able to determine the cause early in the process, because simply uninstalling and reinstalling the game took much less time than going through all my custom content one batch at a time would have done. I just moved the entire The Sims 2 folder in My Documents to a safe place so the new installation wouldn't overwrite my existing neighborhoods and other saved-game files.

I'm thinking that in your case it may be faster and less frustrating to simply reinstall the game rather than trying to hunt down a hack or object that is messing up your current installation. If my experience is any guide, it may be that even if you find the problem hack, removing may not solve your problem. Just be sure to copy your gameplay folders to another directory before the reinstall, and copy them back after--Neighborhoods, SavedSims, Storytelling (if you have any screen captures), LotCatalog.

Most at risk are the three neighborhoods and the playable Sims that come with the game. The installation program will probably overwrite the lot files in the neighborhoods, which would erase any families you have there (at least those in Maxis houses) and whatever histories you have for the playable Sims--but it won't erase files that are not part of the installation, such as screen captures you have made, or Sims you've created. It wouldn't empty out your Downloads folder, for example, or delete .WAV files you've added to the Music folder. But it is always better to be safe, so back up any folder that might have custom or saved-game content.

It is probably best to uninstall the game before reinstalling it, which might erase the EA GAmes Folder in My Documents if you move your Downloads folder rather than copying it (most uninstall routines will not delete a folder created by the installation program if there are subfolders in it which were not part of the original installation), so it's safest to backup the files there. It's easy enough to copy the entire The Sims 2 folder to a TEMP folder until after the reinstall.