CAW world only shows water and lot on in-game load

[SIMplistigal]

I've been testing a newer world that I've been working on, and I'm pleased with how it's shaping up so far, but every time lately that I export the world into the game, when it loads it only shows water and the one lot I've placed as my base for testing. I've attached a photo, and if you look closely, you can see the shadows on the water of where the land should be. It does load eventually, but it takes a while, and the game will crash to desktop if I try to go ahead and start a household without waiting. It's a large world, but I've barely even begun it, so I can't imagine it's a memory issue. All I've done is place bridges, roads/pathways, sculpt, and paint non-route.

I recently installed Generations, and have all the eps up to that, no sp. At first I was having serious lag issues, even in CAW, but it seems to have resolved after I uninstalled and reinstalled. It still makes me wonder, though, if this could be related. Any ideas?

[simsample]

Do you have two copies of the world installed, by any change? Drag your Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 folder to the desktop, run the game to generate a fresh set and install the world again.

Otherwise, upload the world somewhere so that I can test it on my PC.

[SIMplistigal]

Yes, that did it, thank you! But now I'm left wondering, where-oh-where is this second copy hiding? I've always been very careful to follow the instructions on this thread: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/342662.page
Maybe the thread is missing some crucial detail? I never ran into this problem on the other world I've tested, and followed these instructions with that one too. Well...A-searching I will go. :/

Edit: ok, when I used my search engine, 2 copies of the installed world showed up, same time, same location, same everything. But when I look in the file, there's only one. Huh?

[simsample]

If it's installed correctly, it should be in the Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3\ Installed Worlds folder.

However, if you merge package files it's possible that a copy is in the Mods folder, which is a bad thing.

[SIMplistigal]

Yes, I have a World file for it under that folder. I also have the Sims3Pack file version under Documents\ Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3\ Exports and Documents\Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3\ Downloads as a Sims3Pack as well, which I understand to be normal. But when I ran search, it showed up twice for all of those, even though when I look in the actual folders, it's only there once. Maybe search is just being silly and marking it twice, or maybe there is some sort of error, but I don't know enough about that to know the difference...

I do merge my cc files, but only the package ones, and certainly not things like hacks or worlds. I at least know enough to be careful about that! ;) I'm fairly certain that the last time I merged was before I started testing this world, and the backup I kept on desktop is clean of any mention of it. That being said, I probably will go back and remerge things just in case I really did miss something the first time through...I have stuff to add to the merge files anyway! :)

[simsample]

The search thing is probably just the computer showing up the same thing for two locations, Users\ username\ Documents and the documents library, or perhaps the 'My Documents' junction or something.