CC-less Lots, CC Lots, and House CC Borks Game Always *SOLVED!* Thanks, y'all!

[Hammie]

Welll, I've been faced with a weird problem lately. I can't seem to find a proper home for my WooHoo obessed vampire. I'm really too lazy to furnish the house, partly because I'm never satisfied with it, and CC for houses and furniture messes up my game. Even CC-less houses I get. (Weird jump bugs, kids floating, school bus not coming, no walk to work, ect...) Almost every lot has a career attached to it.   (At least every house I've ever downloaded... *grumble, grumble*) Any responses would be appricated.  
:Hammie:

[caffeinated.joy]

Well, I wish I could help, but this is the reason why I never download houses and always build my own. It's really the only way I'll be guaranteed it won't come with any nasty surprises.

[Theraven]

I downloaded a house recently, and had to sort out at least fifty files that were mailbox/trashcan recolors. People should really check what they're uploading... Good thing I always install houses (and sims) with Clean Installer...

I rarely download houses, and only got a few. I try to keep to no-cc houses (or with very little cc), since cc houses tends to clutter up my already full downloads folder and often slow down the play mode and the loading (unless, of course, it's a very pretty house, and it's actually usable). Besides - too many houses looks great on pictures, but are way too small for my use ingame...

[MaryH]

There are very, very few creators who do a good job of cleaning up their houses before uploading them. Most of them are pretty lazy-and forget about one site in particular, those are not only loaded with CC that you don't want, in some cases they have viruses as well.
I've had more than my share of game-crashing houses. They are a pain to get rid of and clean up after. That's when I swore I would be very picky with any lots that I download. There are only 3 sites that I consider safe to download lots from-this being one of them.
So you have to get all the lovely stuff that comes from the houses and throw out the house. That's what I do-install a house, and then throw it out. I use the ingredients to make my own, thank you!
And I do a better job, by the way.  
But I've given up trying to play vampires. They're just too much to deal with. Them and their blood lust, and in your case, sex lust. Too high maintenance for me!

[EKozski]

One of the things I do when I download a house full of Custom Content is, take my Downloads Folder, cut and paste it to my desktop. Then I make a new folder and install the house. If it loads up, I'll hang on to it. But, I still get rid of some of the things I don't want. That's when Download Organizer comes in.

I've never had a problem!

[ancienthighway]

One extremely important feature of Clean Installer is being able to select what you install with the house.  There is four toggles in the upper right corner.  The last of them is to install minus hacks.  If nothing else, click that toggle to deselect any hacks that were packaged with the game.  If you don't, you will get any number of hacks you don't know about that will cause problems with your game.

It's worth while to scroll through the custom content to see what's there and uncheck anything you don't want.  Recolorable objects will come with every recolor the creator had, unless after packaging the lot he or she takes the time to remove them and repackage.  It's not that difficult, there's just too many creators that either don't know how to do it or are too lazy.

[Hammie]

I just Googled what the "Clean Installer" was. It sounds VERY helpful. Sorry about not knowing before hand, but I'm realitvely new to this CC business. Thank you all. Now I can keep the less than pleasant suprises from ruining my game. Thank you all so much.
 

[ancienthighway]

Clean Installer can help you find those little nasty surprises too.  Click on the Clean Installer icon to open it up without loading a Sims2Pack.  Make sure the Recursive box is checked, then choose the directory Downloads.  If you have a lot of CC this will take a while to finish loading, just be patient.

Once the program finishes scanning all your CC, click on the heading Type to sort the files by type.  Some files will be highlighted in red.  That's okay, those are mods or hacks.  Others will be in pink.  That means you have some duplicate files.  If you right click on a file, you'll see a menu of things you can do.  The most important for you right now is being able to delete a file.

First look for the crappy hacks you picked up from house downloads.  The rogue hacks will not have a type, but then Meshes don't either as well as some other CC.  As long as the Name is something that makes sense, you don't have to worry about it.  The files you are concerned about are the files with 32 character length names.  If you click on one of those and don't get a preview image or any information in the bottom of the window, delete it.  In most cases it's one of those rogue hacks.  There's no reason to save it because you don't know what it is so you can't updated it.

Once you've deleted all of those you can find, click on the column heading MD5.  This will sort all of your downloads by a unique identifier.  It will also put all your duplicate files next to files they are duplicates with, even if the file names are different.  You'll want to keep one of them and delete all the dups.  I've had up to 4 files duplicated at time from downloading sims and houses with CC included.  Unfortunately there's no way to get just duplicates to display or bunch them all together.  You'll have to scroll through the entire listing to find them all.

But wait, there's more.  Right clicking a file allows you to move it to another folder.  This is probably the easiest way to be organizing you CC if you haven't already.  Sorting on Type again, you'll have all your various makeup grouped, walls, floors, recolors, game objects, hair, etc.  Highlight all of a type, right click, and then you can make a folder if you need to and move them to that folder, or move them all to an existing folder.  It will make trying to find something much easier.

Where the organizing really pays off is by having a folder for Meshes and another one for Mods.  Any time the game isn't working right, it will be because of either a mesh or a mod that doesn't work with your game.  Depending on the specific "breakage" when it happens, there are experienced people here that can tell you what type file broke your game and how to fix it if you don't know.

One more folder I highly recommend is a Test or New folder.  Any time you download something, put it in that folder first to see if it works with your game.  If it doesn't, you know exactly what folder to look in, and provided you don't add an evening of binge downloading all at once, can easily find the problem.

[Paden]

When I upload a house with custom content, I ALWAYS use the Clean Installer to weed out what does and does not belong in it, so you can be sure you're not getting junk from me that you don't want. I don't let fifty unneeded recolours of what I use slip in and I don't use hacks to build with, so if you ever do want houses that have custom content, you can trust mine.

[Hammie]

Awesome. I bet your houses are fabulous, Paden!