My game wont start?

[Katie]

There's no cache, cigen, or the likes; it opens but it wont load. It just stays blank. It has never taken this long and there's no new content from the last time I played. My computer is fine, there is no plausable reason for this to happen. When I use ctrl+alt+delete the window says "not responding" and I have no idea what's wrong. Can someone help please?

[caffeinated.joy]

When was the last time you ran a maintenance on your computer (spyware/antivirus check, disk cleanup, defrag and disc check)?

Also, what are you system specs?

[HappyThoughts]

I sure hope your play disc isn't the problem, I know my game does that when I try to install it with the disc's lol ancient as they are.

[gazania]

The system specs might indeed be quite important. The last time I had persistent black screen problems, my video card was about to go. However, before you take it out to shoot it, you did the usual la-de-da, I would surmise. Updated the drivers, Direct X, etc.?

Did you try starting the game from the base game? Y'know .... renamed your current Sims 2 folder entirely for the moment, tried starting the game completely vanilla from that base game, just to see if ANY Sim game would play on it?

[ancienthighway]

Simply renaming game folders to start earlier EPs or Base Game won't work.  Install EPs and SPs have entries in the Registry.  The game checks the Registry to find the correct start for the installation, and if you try to start the game any other way, pops up the message saying what disk needs to be installed in order to start.

[gazania]

I realize that I wasn't clear and was inaccurate... sorry. I was referring to removing the user files, as per these steps:

http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:User_Files-Remove_All_User_Files

http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:User_Files-Test_Without_User_Files

It's not running from the base game; rather, it's forcing the game to re-generate from your current expansion. I apologize for the confusion. This is what I get for trying to post when I have people in the background yelling, "C'MON! We're late!"

[Katie]

My grandpa is a crazy techy geek guy. Hahaha. He fixes and updates once a week. It magically works again now, thanks for all the help. My computer is just loonaticial....