more lost than a newbie....

I used to play Sims2 addeictively, and had a boatload of custom content and hacks..... all gone now - my laptop just couldn't handle me adding AL back in 2008 or so - so I had to delete everything off my laptop.

Now we have a new desktop computer that seems to be handling the installation of Sims2 and all my EP's - I have found some custom content and followed the directions to create a 'downloads' folder - yet the only thing showing up in there is the stuff I downloaded from EA. (mostly lame stuff like a car and a kids bed - but I only loaded them to make sure it worked, anyway)

I seem to have lost all my knowledge of how to download and unzip files and install them in the game, nothing I'm doing is getting these thing into the game. This new version of Windows (Vista) on this new computer isn't helping me navigate these issues, either.

I also seem to remember tons of hacked items I can't remember the names of or can't find - things like

*a mirror or picture that could make your sim friends with anyone on the lot, control motives etc
* something that made taking care of plants and gardening much faster and could eliminate the excessive weeding, tending and talking or assign multiple people to tend store or work on plants, etc
* a thingy that could make your sim pregnant and you could control the sex, twins, etc of the baby, or even suspend a pregnancy - is that the InSimenator?

can someone point me toward a simple tutorial written for non- computer geeks that could help?

I may have a file saved on a CD or somewhere in my old computer that may have all of these downloads and hacks saved - can anyone tell me how to re-load it onto the new computer?