very cool - I see this arrangement rather a lot!  Great idea, Netra!

The reason you should install the expansion packs and patches in a particular order deals with crucial game fixes that may not install properly if the presence of another patch is detected.

The patching software used by EA for The Sims 2 is particularly notorious for choking or failing if the slightest incongruity is detected.  To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to do everything in as a pristine manner as possible, ergo, install the expansion packs and patches in a recommended order.

This i not to say it is absolutely necessary that you must do it this way, many people experience no problems with the game after installing the expansion packs willy-nilly.  The order I advocate is from the EA tech support manual and follows common sense, but anyone with any experience with The Sims 2 will know that The Sims 2 and its expansion packs seldom behave in a logical or predictable manner, so your guess is as good as mine what will work.

these divisions are normal if you put lights in certain locations, it happens on darker colour walls also, but is not so noticeable - some lights are worse for this than others - and lighting mods may worse the effect on some video cards.

I am sorry there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer here, but there is none for this.

Maybe if you increase all the in-game graphic settings to max, it will improve.

did you recently install any expansion packs or stuff packs? perhaps any mods or default replacements?

if not - try deleting the cache files:

groups.cache
accessories.cache (only present if you have Pets EP or a later EP)

from
~(My) Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

zbkc - that's sort of normal - try moving the lights farther away and using more of them

it's theoretically possible that one could add houses to the lotbin manually if one had both The Sims 2 and Life Stories.

Basically import the downloaded lot into TS2 then manually move (and probably rename) the BASE-GAME ONLY house from

~(My) Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\LotCatalog

to

~(My) Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims Life Stories\LotCatalog

Like I said, this is theory, I never tried it.

Alternately you could be really brave and create a Teleport folder for Life Stories:

~(My) Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims Life Stories\Teleport

and use Sims2Pack Clean Installer to install the lot (with the sims2import script!) to that Teleport folder instead of the TS2 Teleport folder

But again - this is pure speculation on my part - I didn't try it when I had LS installed, so I can't vouch for it working

janet - that would be one of those InTEEn mysteries best asked at InTEEN's forum

You can never get solid figures from EA about specific items, they obviously don't want their shareholders to know how much money they are losing on certain pet projects.  But this being said, I can give some ball-park figures.

The Sims (original - base game & expansion packs, including licensed translations by 3rd party vendors) to date has sold over 420 million units worldwide with an average shelf-price of USD $29.99 - netting about USD $ 1 649 800 000 (figure is adjusted for inflation) in gross profits for EA... and they are still pressing and shipping Sims original to market.

The Sims 2 (base game & expansion packs, including licensed sales by 3rd party vendors) to date has sold less than 90 million unites worldwide with an average shelf price of USD $32.00 - netting about USD $ 1 224 000 000 (figure is adjusted for inflation) in gross profits for EA... so you can see they've found a way to give us less and squeeze out more

don't fret the small stuff, nequam, we all start as newbies, it gets better

Kevida, TS2 was made entirely without Will Wright too. Wright is credited for, but did not design much -- if any -- of The Sims 2. What content that may be by Wright most probably consists of recycled code stripped from The Sims and SimsVille. He was only used in advertising/promotional material and a member of the team in name only; during most of the life-arc of The Sims 2, he was/has been working on the first stages of Spore and doing the kudos-tour where he generally lived like a rock star and got a pile of honorary degrees and awards purely based on the success of The Sims and his huge cash roll.

Squinge retired and requested that his mods be removed from InSIMenator.net - as such, his mods are no longer available at nor supported by InSIMenator.net.

Holly - please see this thread that discusses the same issue - you will find your soultion there

http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=78087

this is a very well written and informative tutorial, GP!  I am always getting questons in PMs about this, now I have a link to send them!  Thank you!

Thanks whitefire - they much have added it after I un-installed the game, there were only the things in my other post then.

edit -- just looked and yes indeedy, they have added lots of stuff since my last visit a year ago.

Jason, in that case you'll just have to be patient and see if someone has it and is willing to share, or pay the $10 fee to EA (with proof of purchase) for a new serial key.

Jason - the DJ booth isn't one of the downloads AFAIK there is a karaoke set-up that is a download - you can get it here: http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=64570

if there is a DJ booth in the game - look under electronics (audio) - I am not sure something as complex as the DJ booth is safe to clone from the Nightlife EP for use in LS is it's missing.  I no longer have LS installed, so I won't be able to test it for crashing.

oh, so sweet, Bloom, who knew you were such a big softy! *smooch*