oi I haven't done hair meshes but can relate to being out of practice. I will point Kavar to this thread and hopefully he can give you some advice.
thank you Kathy
it's so easy to get out of practice and it seems the longer you leave it the further you get left behind :/
Thank you so much for trying, i actually tried that before i made this thread, i searched for an answer everywhere that i possibly could and still nothing fixed my mesh, i might have to scrap it which would be a shame!
hey plicka

It sounds like your using the unimesh plug in on the newer version of milkshape, thing about this plug in is that on hair meshes, most of them if not all, you have to reassign all the vertices of the mesh as the dual assignments aren't lost in the importing anymore. Windkeeper found a way to make the hair assignments work with the animation and joints, but its temperamental with the orginal animated/dual assignments. I'm not sure what your using or what your working on but try reassiging the whole mesh and see if that fixes your problem...
If you feel brave read windkeepers post on fixing the animation joints.. it worked like a charm for my untamed mesh

and it could possibly fix your mesh if that is the problem.. but I've had some issues with the pixie mesh while using it myself. could just be me screwing it up
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=151722good luck and I hope you get it fixed:)
thanks for trying Kavar, i supose it would have been smarter of me to mention what i am and arent using to make this, i always forget the important bits!
I'm so out of practice and left behind that i'm still using old programs and methods, no unimesh here! i should be using it by the sounds of it though, people seem to be coming out with brilliant stuff with it!
i guess i'm going to have to either scrap the mesh or just keep playing with it untill something magically works, funny how no matter how much better you get at it or how long you've been doing it you still run into so many difficulties and failures!