Bright Red Neighborhood

[Carida]

Greetings,

So I installed some new things yesterday and when I went to go play my game. Loading up my medieval hood.

The whole hood was flashing red. Literally RED. I don't know what to do about it.

I removed the new stuff I put. But no change. I did a hack conflict search and nothings messing with it. I just don't know what's causing it.

If anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it.

-C

[caffeinated.joy]

Red flashing usually indicates a video problem. When was the last time you updated your graphics driver (what card do you have, btw?)

[Tenshii~Akari]

What Joy said.    Make sure your DirectX is also up-to-date.  

I've had this "deadly" occurrence happen a few times... mainly due to lack of free memory in my computer's system.  (also partially due to the fact that my laptop did have a bad habit of running hot, so making sure that it's well ventilated where the fan is located was necessary in my case.)  I had a whole lot happening in certain neighborhoods that it happened in, though... like a lot of decorations, lots, families, large terrains, etc.  Depending on how old/updated or how well your video card handles graphic limits, you may be able to play the game without too many issues... but once it starts getting on in its lifetime, it may or may not be able to handle large neighborhoods like it once used to.    

Even after updating my video drivers (as best as I could considering Dell doesn't support driver updates for my laptop model anymore... :tongue6:) and my DirectX files, it happened after a certain period of playing the game.  But, one thing that did help in limiting this from happening too much on my end, though... and believe it or not, it does help:  making sure you do a frequent disk "clean-up", and defragmenting your hard drives frequently.  That helps the computer to run a little better, and considering that The Sims 2 and its EPs take up a large chunk of space on most people's hard drives, it does help a little in computer performance.  (though not completely fool-proof).  Also, making sure that there aren't any background programs running while the game is on.  As long as there's enough free space and available memory while the game is running, that will happen less.  

If all else fails, though... there's always "windowed" mode (aka, right-clicking your shortcuts to the latest EP you run, going into Properties, and adding a single space and -w after the quoted location in the "Target" Box).  I find that more convenient, seeing as my own video card insists on screwing up every time it tries to resize the screen to the game's set resolution.  That, and there's no "blue screen" and way less red flashing than before.  

(Yeah, I know I'm wordy right now, but just throwing out any possible means that've worked well for me.  Hopefully they'll help you out.  :angel:)

[Carida]

Alright so I moved stuff around and I think it was because I had moved the inteenminator and the insimenator to a different file that wasn't the main downloads files.

I was compressing files *grins*

I moved them back and no more flashing red. BUT! Now all the new items I'd put in are black. And when you click on something to make your sim do something, you know their faces? Well .. their faces are black. And all new sims I made since that error are black in their thumbnail pictures and everything.

I'm going to check on my graphics card and try to update it. I'm not sure which kind I have let me check. And not quite sure where to find it either! Hehe. But I'll look around.

Alright! So I found them and I went to update them but there are no updates so there we are. Bleh on Dell.

Do you think i should like delete the thumbnails or something? And that's why the little pictures of the sims and all the objects in the game are black?

Thank you all so much for your help so far! Very much appreciated.

-C

ps. OH And I can't use the windowed mode. My pc has a fit and crashes like a child throwing a tantrum

[Tenshii~Akari]

Okay... well, if there's black faces and everything, it's another possibility your objects.package file got corrupted.  You can try to replace the corrupted version with the one from your game CDs (mainly most recently released EP) and see if that helps.  Here's the link to the method in doing so.  

As for finding out your graphics card info, go to Start => Run, then type in dxdiag in the "open" box and click OK.  The DirectX Diagnostics tool will pop up (where you can also get some info on your computer in the first tab, like amount of RAM, etc.)... once it does, click on the third tab labeled Display, and look in the upper left-hand corner labeled "Device" for your video card info.  :angel:

[Carida]

Resolved!

So I tried to do the thingie that Tenshii suggested but I couldn't find the specified files and was frustrated. So then I took the inteen and insim and put them back into the main downloads file. Then I deleted all my thumbnails and let the game make new ones. And vola! All fixed!

I figure it would be a reminder to everyone else. When they say don't take it out of the main downloads folder. Don't do it! Do what they say!

Even if your tryin' to clean and compress! Always put it back!

Alrighty. Thank you everyone who responded!

All is happy in Carida computer land.

-C