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I have been playing my sims 2 pets for about a month, then yesturday I tried to play and it won't even come on. The white screen pops up that says the sims 2 pets and that's it, it never goes to the EA GAMES screen or the part when all of the sims are doing various things, my drives are fine, I put other things in and they work fine. I have a Radeon 9200 graphic card and more then enough ram to run the game fine, I have all of the big expan. packs, no glamour life, family fun, or christmas pack just the uni, nightlife, ofb, and pets.I called EA they were no help at all, I just want to know if I can just take the download folder out and buy another pets disk and replace my downloads folder with all my great hairs and clothes and sims, without reininstalling the game,because I justttttttt don't want to go through all of that. Or should I take my downloads out and save it some where else and reinstall all over again with a new pets disk.

whenever it does that to me (which is every so often) I just try starting it again and it then loads like it should.

try that and/or deleting the Groups.cache file

I tried many times to restart and nothing works, you said to try to delete the groups.cache file,I don't have that folder I have something called the HTTP Cache folder. So should I delete that and try again.

Kendra - the groups.cache is a file located:

My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

or in a similarly named folder inside the Home folder on a Mac.

Okay I have done everything you guys suggested and still nothing works, do you guys think that it could just be my disk or what pleaseeeeeee help I want to play so bad.

Since deleting Groups.cache didn't work, drag your Downloads folder to your Desktop and try starting the game again.  If the game does work for you, then you've got a bad package, usually a mod/hack or mesh, that's stopping your game.

I had this problem until I installed a new CD drive that I use solely for just "reading" game CD's. My system came with a DVD/CD write with lightscribe which runs slower and is INCREDIBLY picky about discs I put in, sometimes it would take me over an hour to get a game past the flash screen. I picked up a cheapy $30 CD reader, set it as a secondary drive and my game starts immediately. (knock wood).

If you have a bad package, and you are unsure which it is, there is a great tutorial on MTS2 on how to find it

Okay, I did everything you guys suggested, still the game does not start everytime. I deleted the Sims 2 Pets from my computer/programs, then deleted it in the recycle bin, put the Pets disk 1 and redownloaded it all over again, just by doing the above the game started and worked for a couple of days. Then again a couple of days later the same thing, the game will not start. So I repeated my same steps again and the game starts. Does anyone know why this keeps happening, has this happen to anyone else, and how did you fix it. I would love for my game to be working great before I buy a new expansion pack(seasons).

Anyone please help....

I have the exact same problem!

I am having the same problem with Nightlife.. and I've done everything that has been suggested in this thread and it still wont start. I click on the game in my start menu and it says i need to put in the disk, and it is in. Im getting tired of it, I've already gone through 2 Nightlife disks because of this (this one being the 2nd.) and I dont know what the problem is.

When all else fails, reinstall from scratch. That's what I've done in the past. Since the last time I did this, just before I installed Pets (months ago), I haven't had it happen. Just make sure to backup files.

Kendra (and anyone else coming back to this thread since it doesn't appear that Kendra has been here for a while),

There's some good tips on making your computer more "Sims 2 Friendly" by visiting HERE. (http://tg.sims2techguide.net/index.php)

It's also possible that something else, maybe completely unrelated to the Sims 2 game, has corrupted or changed the computer's Registry settings, and might be resolved by doing a "System Restore" back to a point in time when everything else was working.

Lastly, make sure that you have your Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware programs disabled when you boot up your Sims game. Even if the game "worked fine" with them running before, sometimes their 'updates' will begin interfering with the function of the game.

Good luck.

Okay I have done everything besides restarting the whole sims 2 and expans. and I am still having the same problem,  and yes I restored my computer to an earlier time and it still keeps doing it. I would love not to restart the downloading process over, any other ideas please.

Kendra, did you uninstall the Pets ep, or did you just delete the folder?

Okay - I'm back.
The other day I was sooo desperate to play sims and I figured that it was just my nightlife disc... so I bought a stuff pack assuming that it would work but it didnt! It didnt show up either! argh. >_< It doesn't even acknowledge the fact that there is a disc in the drive at all... and it's only sims games *I assume* because I think everything else works fine...

I just deleted the folder, so I guess I will uninstall the pets fully and reinstall and add the patch and then add the seasons. can anyone tell me if the patch is a good idea or not.

People most often have the problem you are describing when they have downloaded too much CC for their comp/game engine to handle. You did not mention if BodyShop starts. What you may need to do is move all of your custom content, filter through it and slowly add it back in.

First I recommend that there is not too much stuff in any one folder. All CC and mods relating to CAS & BodyShop  goes into SavedSims. Yes mods to hid clothing work when placed there, they also work when using create-a-sim, not just the in-game create-a-family.

Second go through your downloaded files with S2CI, delete any duplicate files. This can help much more than you would think. Lastly go through you files, delete anything that you don't use. Yes this is difficult, but I found that I was not using most of my 10 pages of eyes. Something interesting I have found in putting all BodyShop related content in SavedSims: no matter the combination, BodyShop or CAS tends to crash when there are close to or more than 5,000 files in the folder.

Okay so I manually uninstalled the pets and seasons and deleted some of my custom content and now the game works great, so thank you all.

Ok - it appears that there are two potential problems here:

RazedinNeon - you need a new CD/DVD-reader for your computer, the read-diode on yours is burned out

Kendra - you don't mention if you are playing on a Mac, are you?

No I am not playing on a mac, just a regular pc.

Okay first things first, what is a read diode and my drivers are somewhat new, I brought new ones in 2005, so could they still be the problem, because it's still doing the same thing, loading on some days and others not.HELP me please.

I would recommend using a lense cleaner for your CD/DVD reader before replacing it.  I have a similar problem with OFB startup.  I get the splash screen then an error message saying blah blah blah failed to initialize properly.  I haven't pinpointed the problem yet.  I've done system restores, clean installs and maual patches with defrags between every EP, and even removed and defragged then replaced the page file.  I have found a workaround however.  I have to reboot my system with the OFB disk in the drive, then as soon as the desktop comes up, hit the OFB shortcut while the system is still loading up all the other startup items.  Once it's up and running, I can close it and start it up again with no problems.  I suspect it has something to do with Norton Anitvirus, but i get the same problem with it disabled as well as enabled, and it's a quirky thing that only happens once in awhile.

Okay everyone who was so great at trying to help me, I think I found a solution to my problem. I log off and created a new screen for just my sims and nothing else, no music downloads, no antivirus, no internet, just the sims and it comes on everytime, when I want to look at other things, I log off and go back to the owner screen and everything is fine, so thanks everyone so much, hopefully this will work.

Okay everyone It's doing it again, help pleaseeeee!

Yes, I have a CD/DVD rom drive that was only 6 months old and it went out, sometimes you get a bad one, or you burn it out. And check your Support site for the CD/DVD rom there may be a driver update that you don't have.

Okay I changed drives and still it does the same thing.