asaasafighting,

As with most new ep's, BV changed some coding and as a result insim (which is using older coding) conflicts with certain things.  People who have stubbornly left insim in the game have had problems with their sims performing some of the new actions, blank wants panels, lots freezing, stuck sims, etc.  The obj. version is the least conflicting one but even just using that you'll have issues.  Also keep in mind that BV introduced not only new actions but new places for sims to whoohoo.  Hacks that affect behave codes are unstable.

Just be patient.  While it's not as convenient as insim, you can do most anything using boolprop cheats that insim is capable of.  Spawning the sim modder, the clothing tester, badge juicer, tombstone of life and death, etc. will give you most of the same cheating options as insim did.  

The only thing I'm not sure about is school.  I always used the "no school" option because I don't like the education system for kids-teens in The Sims.  All of my sim kids were "homeschooled" because I wanted them to have the time to earn skill points for college and adulthood.  It seems to me that if they're going to school every day they should get skill points out of it, but they don't and by the time they get home from school and do homework, they have no energy left to learn skills or socialize (unless you cheat and boost their needs).

Merola's multi-painting still works and it has a lot altering features concerning needs, aspiration, personality, interests, DNA, job and so-forth.  Honestly it's a good suppliment along with boolprop cheats until they can update insim.

I took it out after installing the new ep.  I'll definately use it again when a compatible version is made, but until then I rely on boolprop cheats.  They'll come out with a new version for BV soon enough, I'm sure.

Each new expansion or stuff pack you install will overwrite the custom camera settings of Gunmod's cameras.  All you have to do is reinstall it after installing your pack/expansion.  I've extracted the one I use into a folder labled "Gunmod cameras" so that I can easily put it back in after each new expansion.  

It's safe to use Gunmod's cameras, btw.  It's not a "mod" so much as custom camera settings, so it doesn't change game codes.

If it hasn't been mentioned already, you can fix this little problem by using the "move_objects on" cheat and deleting the plumb bob.  A normal one will respawn in its place.

Oh goddess save me, there are so many hot sim guys in here!  I've been away for so long and the hunks have just piled up!

*visualizes a mountain of nekkid gorgeous men to climb and drools*

I've got to go through this thread and see what all I've missed!

Admiral, it's a PCI-E, but my new card doesn't have any extra ports or wires to connect it directly to the power supply, that I've noticed.  The installation instructions say to just push it into the PCI slot and make no mention of connecting it to the power supply.  It's a High Tech ATI Radeon x1650 Pro.

LOL!  No worries at all.  I have days like that myself all the time.  It's the thought that counts.

Yes, as I said in the updated post, one of the first things I tried was downloading and installing older drivers to see if the problem was in the newest one.  Thank you for the advice, though.

What I'm asking is whether it's possible that my power supply's 12v rail is bad, as it was the cheapest 450w supply we could find.  I know that a 450w power supply with a 12v rail should be sufficient, I just want to know if it's possible that the rail in mine is bad and thus not distribuing the power correctly.  It's the only explanation I have left for why my new vid card causes the monitor to go black whenever I try to run video games.  I don't want to look into possibly throwing more money away on another new graphics card if all I have to do is purchase a higher end power supply to fix the problem, if that makes any sense.

Try deleting your thumbnails folder in your EA Games/The Sims 2 folder.  When you restart the game the folder will regenerate, and as this tends to fix mismatched thumbnails in the sim bin, it should also work for your needs.

Update:  I bought the card, tried it out and found that no matter what game I try to play, the monitor shuts down without notice.  I just got a new powersource put in, which is 450w.  I sent the card back and they sent me another of the same type, and I still had the shutdown issue...so I had to put my old card in and accept spending $250 on a card that won't run in my machine.

Now, I have looked over and looked over the specs and my system, shared the info with friends and updated every bloody thing I could think of, including the chipset and sound drivers.  I made sure to remove all lingering ati drivers before installing the new card and matching drivers.  I tried downloading and installing older drivers, thinking that perhaps the newest one was buggy.  My system was not overheating, the card was not overheating.

I have a theory and I want to ask the tech savvy people here if it could be possible.  While browsing a World of Warcraft forum, I found a thread discussing crashes and errors.  Someone in there said that sometimes if there's a lack of power, the computer will "black screen" (which is what mine was doing with the new card).  They said that even if you have a 450w power supply, the strength of the "12 volt rail" might not be sufficient to deliver that power where needed.  

Because of this nugget of information, I'm wondering if my 450w power supply is to blame because of a weakling 12 volt rail.  We bought the most affordable 450w we could find because I needed a new power supply fast.  Is it possible that by purchasing a more expensive high-end brand of power supply, I'll solve my "black screen" issues with the new card?

I've been trying to play on my old card but the game is so unstable that I've resorted to playing on my laptop.  Half of the time when playing on my desktop, if I try to save the game, it bluescreens or crashes and brings up an error report.  The laptop handles the game fine except that it doesn't like some clothing and hair meshes and puts weird spikes and lines in them, and some of the bigger houses lag more on the laptop than they would on my desktop computer.

Hmm, maybe I'll try that.  I don't like the idea of leaving my antivirus and firewall turned off, though.  It's not an issue with the sims, but I also play online games that crash with the new vid card.

I'm really beginning to suspect that it's running too hot and has a crappy cooling system (despite the ads saying it was state of the art).  My case is small and there isn't room to install another fan, so I'm probably SOL until we can afford to put together a brand new computer.  Thanks for trying to help, everyone.

I've noticed this problem on large houses, particularly the ones that have a lot of trees, bushes and deco.  If there's a greenhouse with sprinklers, it will also significantly slow down "ultra speed", likely because of animations and high polygons.

I know this is cliche, but have you downloaded and installed the latest drivers for your video card?  Another thing you could try is uninstalling and reinstalling Seasons.  I had some major problems after installing the patch, and reinstalling fixed them.

I've done dxdiag.  It happens with any game application I try to run, though some run for longer than others before the computer shuts off or bluescreens.  I also tried disabling anti-aliasing in the Catalyst control center, because I've heard that sometimes it can cause problems.  That didn't work, either.

I'm not sure about the shared memory.  What would that be under in bios settings and what changes would I need to make if that is the case?  

I didn't connect a power lead from the psu to the graphics card, I just inserted it into the slot as per the instructions.  Molex connector?  I'm really unfamiliar with that.  The instructions just say to insert the card in the PCI express slot.  It says nothing about connecting to an external power source, and I don't see a connection space on the card for such a thing.  Here's what came with the card:

15 pin VGA connector for CRT monitor,
Dual-link DVI connector for Digital Flat Panel,
S-Video or Composite connector for TV/VCR

System specs:

NEC Computers International
Powermate series
Intel
Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz
1 gig RAM
450w power supply

I reseated the RAM because I thought that might help...it was just one of the many things I tried just on the off-chance that it would solve the problem.

Thank you for responding.  I'd really like to get this card working for me and I can't see why my system wouldn't support it.