Vacation Home Crash Help Needed

Hi Gang,

I have two sims in a vacation home which crashes to the desktop when I try to play the home after a save. Since the sims are from a larger household, I cannot play their original household until this is solved. Searching in various ways has not come up with a solution and only one post even close to what I am experiencing. Any help (or pointers to help I've missed) would be appreciated.

Neighborhood (NH) is Verona, sub-NH is Takemizu (far east). The home in sub-NH is a copy of a vacation home template and I've played other copies of the template for other sims in this sub-NH and other sub-NH's. I'm running on win2k, have essentially all of the EPs and SPs (there's one SP I don't have which I understand was replaced).

The sims "who are on vacation" in the home are a brother and sister from a household where the father has the deed to the vacation home. A step-mother, and three step-sibblings currently reside in the original household. Home was once saved and re-entered successfully, but this second save is crashing just after the 7th bright blue tile on load. A freshly started OETreeDelete.xls file has two entries of "holiday hacker" and that's it. As far as I can remember, I left the brother and sister just off the porch, ready for another excursion, but they might be finishing up an accupuncture massage to boost energy.

The only thing close which a search has found involved a campsite with the same problem. This was over at moreawesomethanyou. Advice was to use the "tombstone of L&D" or simbiology's sim teleporter to remove the sims from the home. I have used the teleporter to remove the two sims from the vacation home, but the main NH household still thinks they are on vacation and that household is unplayable. The brother and sister are playable now. I also cannot do anything with the vacation home, it still crashes on an attempt to load and I cannot bulldoze it. I've taken a peek with simPE to see if there is a "on vacation" flag, but didn't see anything obvious. I cannot play, move out or bulldoze with the original household either. Other homes in the NH are playable and I put in a new sim as a test which is also playable.

I had made a copy of the sims2 data directory (which includes downloads) just before starting to play with the crash but with much supernatural pleading and little hope, I did try reloading the latest backup. The previous backup was 12 days earlier and I've done too much since to want to reload it (e.g., the original household didn't exist 12 days before). I tried removing some auto-rebuilt files, thumbnails, caches, etc. I disabled and removed hacks and CC (although I forgot the cars, but no new ones have been added in months and none exist in the sub-NH) I've used Pescado's bat box to reset sims, including the brother and sister after retrieval. Nothing I have tried seems to clear that vacation home or make it in anyway changeable.

I had this load problem once with a non-vacation house where I was able to "move" the sims out and bulldoze the home with no noticeable ill effects.

I suspect my only option for the original household will be to have some sim(s) have the rest of the family move in with them (by game or forced with a "cheat") but I am hesitant to do this as it will not transfer any placed items. It will also leave two homes in the game which I can't play or remove and space is at a premium in Verona and Takemizu. The placed items aren't that big of a problem though and I'll lose them if necessary.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, simsplyr