Reinstall Goofs Neighborhood

[kinnika]

(Sigh) All right... to begin the agony: My game was messed up before I got Pets.

1) Entire custom neighborhood disappeared (although it was still in Sim PE) - would love to find out how this happened to begin with...

2) Original Terrains were double booking lots (lots on top of other lots, laying on top of roads). Just figured this was a corrupted terrain that would fix itself during reinstall.

So, what else to do beside fix the problem before I install Pets. That is what I did. I uninstalled and then reinstalled all my games, and then did a quick check to see if they were there before installing Pets. All there. I finally had the disappeared neighborhood back! However, my latest and greatest characters were M.I.A, including their lots. My greatest stories - gone. All the other families dated back an age (teens were back to kids, kids to babies, etc). The only thing I could think of was maybe they went back in age because they were InSIM aged.

I figured... I'll fix this after I install Pets. I'll add to that neighborhood and switch stuff out slowly to see what works and what doesn't!

I installed Pets (of course backing up all my data before hand to switch over after the install).

Now I have some new problems in Pleasantview (and only in Pleasantview): My Sims won't enter a house. If they are already in a house, they won't go into the next room, using a door. They won't do anything on command. They just walk a couple paces and stop. Their Plump Bob (or is it Plum Bob?) just flickers. And I have another added problem (not as big): After I downloaded my custom lots into the Lot Catalog folder... all the new Pet lots, except for one disappeared. I know I didn't write over them.

I am afraid that I might have to cut my losses and just drop Pleasantview and my other neighborhood I've been working on for years and just begin a whole new neighborhood. Please someone tell me I don't have to do this.

Alas, I am still tinkering with these dang little problems and its been two days since my un-played Pets have been installed. Someone please help.


P.S. I am not exactly Sim PE savvy so I wouldn't be able to just look things up and see if it looks right or not.


* After a few days of checking other neighborhoods *

Now, all the neighborhoods are having trouble with the Sims not doing things and the flickering Plum Bob. Anyone know why this is happening? Let's just try to figure this one problem out...


All right, so this is what I'm going to do... I'm going to uninstall Pets and then try again, unless anyone has a better suggestion.

[ancienthighway]

The first thing you should do is take out your custom content, to include mods and see if you game starts to respond.  I'd even go so far as deleting the TS2 folder and let the game regenerate everything from scratch again.  Hang onto your backups pre-Pets though.

Everything in the newly generated neighborhoods with the default sims and no CC should be working as expected.  You can start to add CC, except for mods back in.  As long as the EP/SP requirements of the CC are met, your game should still function properly.

Mods are where things can get a little more complicated.  Make sure you have the up to date version for the most recent EP/SP you are playing, whether it's Pets, or one of the more recent EPs and you are just adding Pets now for the first time.

After you have the mods updated, run the HCDU (www.simwardrobe.com) and check for conflicts between your mods.  If there's conflicts, you'll have to determine if they are causing problems or not, and if they are causing problems, if you need to stop using one of them or not.

If your game is still functioning as it should, I suggest copying that TS2 folder to a new file name, like TS2-Good, then put your backup pre-Pets into the game.  If it still has problems, then those neighborhoods are most likely corrupt, and without a lot of experience in SimPE, unrecoverable.

[kinnika]

Thanks, ancienthighway, for responding. I was hoping you would. I was getting a little concerned that if you had no suggestions, I would be in big trouble.

After I installed Pets, I did a half-hearted job with checking out my neighborhoods. I didn't go into lots and play a little. I only checked to see if the neighborhoods had everything in them that they did before.

It wasn't until later on after going into a few lots and messing around did I find the problem. And I was surprised that I didn't do what you had suggested earlier on.

I will come back after trying this out and let you know how it went.

[MaryH]

Oh, yeah-I had a near miss with my new EP's, but it's always the best idea to just simply rename the folder for the game "old" and let the new one regenerate. I had to poke and prod the older neighborhoods to work, but finally found what the problem was with it: non-working CC which threw up errors on my lots.
Of course I replaced that with even better CC!
The biggest problem I had was to replace the hacks/mods to match more or less evenly what I had in my neighborhoods before I installed the new EP's-that alone took about half a day.

[kinnika]

Yeah, that's the problem, lol.

I know this will take awhile - if not a few days - if there is a problem with CC. Problem is, I have so much of it, it always takes awhile to to find the culprit.

Fortunately, I do have a backup copy of my Sims files pre-Pets. My N5 is still messed up, but it's something, at least. All the other neighborhoods are playable.

I'm really hoping that it's just a matter of not updating certain mods *crossing fingers*.

Well, *rolling up sleeves* I'm finally on my way to trying to correct the problem. Wish me luck...

(Didn't want to double-post)

*A few hours later*

I removed all CC, including mods, Saved Sims, Lot Catalog, Collections, anything stuck in Teleport, even Broadcast CC.

Worked like a charm. Didn't have to regenerate anything. The cool thing was that InSim and Inteen were the first things I added (just to be sure it wasn't them - my game kinda relies on those two mods) and the game, fortunately, worked fine. Inteen being the case due to updating to the Pets version, of course.

So, everything I took out, I eventually added back. Everything worked fine. Weird, but cool.

So, I think I'm in the clear and can start playing very soon. The next thing I did take your advice on is the next order of business... testing my mods and making sure they are up to date. Unless Trips & Quads (TwoJeffs) needs to be updating, I think I'm good.

Was this possibly a problem of what to update and install when? Is there a slim possibility that I didn't just need to update Inteen but maybe re-download a fresh copy of InSim, too?

When everything is back to normal again, I will report back in.

*Much, much later*

Okay! All done and ready to play! There was just one culprit. You were right - it was a problem of two out-of-date mods. They were Closer Family and Always Sleep on Community Lots. So I got rid of those and updated / replaced.

Thanks guys, again, for your input and advice. I'm off to play now...

[ancienthighway]

Great to hear you solved the problem!

[kinnika]

Yes, problem solved. Fortunately.

Unfortunately, even with a fresh game reinstall, I was unable to salvage the corrupt neighborhood (that suddenly disappeared). It went back to normal, except all my games were unsaved (lots, characters, storylines). Ages dropped a notch for every character in the game. I just went back in time about eight months of game play.

I went back to see if I could rebuild but so much stuff vanished, I was too disheartened to rebuild and restore. So, in the end, I did decide to cut my losses (after all, if this terrain is corrupt for some reason - why risk it all over again) and start work in a fresh neighborhood. This will still remain a mystery as to why this happened, but some people have told me that sometimes the unexplained does happen with the Sims.