I suppose it's possible I installed the Ford Mustang from the EA site when I was still new to this, before getting involved with other custom content. I may never have looked beforehand.

You're welcome.

Hmm, mine was there when I installed. Is Deluxe different?

My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads

Well, that's with default settings on Windows XP at least. I understand that the folder isn't always created, so you may have to create itself. And I believe you must also make sure it is exactly as typed - capital 'D' and with an 's' on the end.

That was my problem in a nutshell. I'm a packrat IRL, and I did the same thing for my game. If you ever find yourself saying, "I'll probably find a use for this sometime, so I should download it now" - stop, close the window, slap yourself, then go look for something else.

Amen!

I can't say much about Pets, Bon Voyage or Seasons since I don't own them. I've heard Pets sucks (overall - and did create problems for non-Pets users) and BV is too much of a hassle until EA addresses some serious issues; but Seasons is supposed to be a good one to have (if you don't mind monitoring your Sims a little more closely). But then like some have said, it depends a lot on what you like and want in your game. For me, my fave expansion is Open For Business because I *love* running businesses. It's a blast, and there's are hundreds of different styles of businesses you can run, of all sorts of sizes.

Nightlife was great, and although the dating and turn-ons and vampires was cool (although I generally avoid the latter), having the ability to own your own car is pretty cool, especially if you grab some of the custom ones. Using NL + OFB allows me to run a car dealership, which is fun and a great way to earn simoleons.

I also really like University. Sometimes it can seem tedious (and maybe I'm still new enough to Uni to not be tired of it yet), but there are some cool rewards and careers that are only enabled through Uni (or hacks, but that's up to you). Plus, I love the instruments and the ability to perform together as a group. Using Uni +  NL + OFB allowed me to open a bar & grill downtown with a stage, and the family of 4 that owns it goes down every night for a few hours and plays music for the patrons (earning a tidy sum in tips in the process!).

So you can see that personal taste very much influences the EPs you should get. I personally don't really care for the stuff packs. It's like paying for custom content that you can get for free (and often at a better quality) from fan sites. They don't really add anything to the game other than items, but if you want extra options and are uncomfortable downloading too much custom content, then getting the stuff packs ensures those extra options with the Maxis seal of approval (if that's supposed to be somehow comforting).

You need to put the cheats you use most frequently in your startup cheat file. But you'll need to remember that any cheats you put in here will be active by default when you start the game, and you'll have to manually turn them off if you need to the old-fashioned way.

Here's a good tutorial for startup cheats:
MikeInside's Cheat Shortcut Tutorial

That's the only thing I feel bad about. Having worked in sales for as long as I have, I know that customers take out their anger on the wrong people, but unfortunately they don't have any other choice. I hate directing my anger at Sam (but not necessarily one of the SM's that shall remain nameless), but since nobody in EA wants to fess up, that's all we can do.

The Maxis system is kinda retarded. Sometimes case matters, sometimes it doesn't. Heck, you can even type "move_objects" or "moveobjects" and they both work. Don't make a whole lot of sense, but I always type it the way I posted above, and never had a prob. *shrug*

Get the teen pregnancy mod, from the same place.

Ugh, sorry, I'm still in the middle of my first morning cup of coffee. But yeah, switch the true/false around. But in my lowly defense, I did say that not everything can be used this way, so some things can. LOL. I do know chairs work, including with the snapobjects off, which I've used for my painting studio. It's kinda cool actually. But anyway, I'll go finish that coffee before offering any more help. LOL.

Press Shift + Ctrl + C to bring up the cheat window, then type in:

boolprop allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation [true/false]

True obviously sets it to where you can, and false turns it back on again. Make sure you do a false one after your done. And not everything is useable at 45 degree angles, so you'll have to test it on different things. Doesn't break your game, just makes it so a Sim can't interact with the object(s).

While that is a sound, logical suggestion, unfortunately several people have tried it, and EA is ignoring them to the extreme. Since so many people have already uninstalled SecuROM (often at a cost, since they hired professionals, or reformatted their entire hard drives) they are completely unwilling to reinstall BV just to give them some file that may or may not contain information that is private. Several others refuse to comply because they want a method of discerning what's inside the files first, and even if they *could* read what was inside these mystery files, they are stating that they would refuse to reinstall BV after going through the pain and cost of removing it. Who can blame them? EA has no intention of replacing our games, let alone reimbursing us the cost of repairs.

All of these concerns are being posted in MaxoidSam's thread, but they've so far been ignored, other than a couple of attempts by Sam to convince people their's nothing secret inside the files; but he and the others don't even know what's in there - they had to contact Sony to find out. Heck, even Satan (Microsoft) asks us if it's okay to upload the error files before doing it, and we can examine the file because it's readable in even the most basic word processors.

I also think it's interesting how when anyone posts important *facts*, not merely opinions, they also go unnoticed (or get deleted/banned). However, I would recommend that anyone and everyone that owns Sims head over to the BBS and post at least once, because apparently THAT is how they are making their retarded "official" count of people with problems (number of posters, not number of posts). This kind of count obviously doesn't include the number of people that aren't aware of the problem, fixed it already not realizing it was related to BV, simply don't care to post on the BBS, or possibly don't even know about the BBS. Believe it or not, I was the latter - never realized there was an official BBS. Hell, I've hardly ever visted that lame website other than for patches anyway. And why bother? Other sites like InSim and MATY are 1000x better, more informative, more interactive, and, as Teren Rox put it, people over here aren't stupid.

Since there's so much Sony love going around I thought I'd chip this in:



Out of curiosity, what's your BBS username, Teren Rox? Would love to see what you posted that got you banned. LOL. I'm working on it myself.