Okay... I didn't bother doing a search for my problem because I don't know *how* to begin to even define it as a specific issue/bug. And in all the time I've spent lurking on MTS2 I don't even recall ever reading about anybody else having the same problem (not that they haven't). I mean, I've dealt with the usual issues, like game crashes, with no problem, but what I'm dealing with now seems to defy logic, LOL!

I'm to the point now where I'm considering reinstalling the game. I even tried hardonmachin's tip of moving the entire Sims 2 folder out of the My Documents tree then running the game again to reset the defaults. Believe it or not I STILL had the problem! :banghead: There's no problem loading the game, no error messages, nothing... and I can't for the life of me think of anything that could have caused this weirdness.

The first indication that something wasn't quite right was that I had a swivel camera view arrow on my neighborhood screen instead of the usual pointer cursor. Thinking I must have accidently bumped a mouse button or something I kept clicking random ones (the damn thing has *eight* buttons, including L/R and roller!) until the cursor eventually turned into an arrow. This continued to happen everytime I loaded a neighborhood.

Then I noticed that the family name boxes weren't appearing over the houses when I moused-over them; the only way I could find out the occupants of a house was to actually click on it.

Once I started playing a family I then noticed that the cursor wasn't turning into what it's supposed to (sunburst?, asterisk?, whatever) when you mouse-over something you can interact with. I could still interact with everything okay, though.

Of course, up until then everything was just a minor annoyance, nothing that really affected gameplay, so I wasn't too worried about it at first. Then things started to get a bit more complicated once I went into buy mode.

The first time I went into buy mode I was able to select and delete existing objects, but I couldn't *move* them. And when I tried to buy a new object the cursor would act like it was "holding" something, but nothing was there... I could even buy and place it, but nothing would show up. I then quit without saving, restarted the game, same thing.

I quit again, deleted any cheat from my cheat file that had to do with object movement/placement, but that didn't help either. I did, however, notice one cheat (testingcheatsenabled) in my cheat file that I do NOT remember adding, and have never had a reason to use it for that matter. Can hacks automatically add cheats to your cheat file like that?

Anyway, I picked a different neighborhood and house and went into buy mode again, but this time I couldn't select/buy/move *anything*. Build mode was the same way--I couldn't even place floors. Later, I discovered this same problem in neighborhood build mode.

So I finally decided to load my backup game from several days ago which worked fine at the time. That didn't fix the problem either! (Although, I did copy/paste the Sims 2 backup folder over the current folder so maybe it didn't overwrite the problem file(s). :shrug: )

Does anybody have any idea what the problem is? I'm at a total loss! :confused: Like I said, the only other thing I know to do is reinstall the game, something I'd like to avoid if at all possible.

Do you have any custom cursors installed? Something like cursorx or anything similar? I know that custom cursors prevent the cheat console from coming up. If you have any of those, uninstall or disable them.

Could be that the cursors file is corrupted somehow - that would explain the cursor weirdness... but that probably wouldn't affect the Build/Buy. So I am pretty stumped.

Daysies:
Nope, no custom cursors installed, but I didn't have any problems bringing up the cheat console anyway. Speaking of the cheat console, I did notice I seemed to be getting more errors than usual, now that I think about it.

Sir Ignitus:
A corrupted file (cursor or otherwise) is a good possibility, but I would think a new one would have been created when I moved my Sims 2 folder and restarted the game (thus forcing it to reinstall all default files).

I have this sinking feeling that I'm going to have to reinstall everything. I'll keep checking this thread for the next day or two, though... maybe somebody can think of something. *sigh*

if you do have to reinstall the game, you might want to delete your nehborhoods because they might have a problem. Do you download objects often, maybe somebody put a virus in the download foler or something. but what are the chances of that :P
I hope you get it figured out soon.

Do you play with the boolprop testingcheatsenabled true cheat running in the background? If so, turn it off. That's what generates those strange errors when you open up the cheat console. Most of those errors aren't real errors anyway.

I may be barking up the wrong tree, but could the problem be with the mouse and not the game. I use a track ball and if I don't clean it every few days, my buttons will stick. I have also had to reinstall the software for it. Not sure this is of any use, but I try everything to keep from having to reinstall. I hope you get your problem solved. Good luck!

Teresa

PhatMan:
Yeah, if I do have to reinstall I'll probably just delete everything except what's in my downloads and collections folders. I rarely seem to get any of my families/neighborhoods developed to any degree anyway before I have to reinstall for one reason or another. I had wondered about a virus too since I do d/l a lot of stuff, but I would think the chances of that would be pretty slim, plus my Norton and Adaware run every night.

daisies:
Nope, I've never used the testingcheatsenabled cheat because I'm worried that I'll do something weird and screw up my game, LOL. HOWEVER, like I said earlier, when I went into my cheat .txt file yesterday to delete some cheats I had added (move_objects, snapobjectstogrid, and allow45degreeangle) I noticed that the testingcheatsenabled was indeed in my cheat file -- but I don't remember putting it in there, AND there was a space between it and the last cheat I had entered and I KNOW I wouldn't have put that spacing line there because I had read that you should type one cheat per line with no spaces! So I certainly can't rule out the possibility of that cheat affecting my game, or that something automatically installed that cheat in my cheat file.

teresa:
A good suggestion, but, well... I have an optic mouse so there's really nothing to clean, LOL.

Thank you, everybody, for trying to help. I really appreciate it! I think I'll try to start the game one more time tonight to see if some miracle occurred since the last time I tried. Then I'll check this thread again tomorrow in case anybody has any other ideas.

I remember there being a problem with some of this type of mouse with sims 1, but I have not read of any with sims 2 yet. I hope you get your problem solved.. I have not come across any thing that would be helpful to you. Good luck!

teresa

Well, you guys aren't going to believe this but it appears I got that miracle, LOL! :yippee: I decided to start up the game one last time to confirm the problem was still there before going through the trouble of reinstalling... and now everything seems to work fine! :wtf2: :gonemad:

The only thing I've done between my last post and now was renew my subscription to Norton Antivirus, which also involved a butt-load of program updates I had to install. Anyway, I'm not sure how this happened, but it did, and I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth!

Thanks again, everybody, for trying to help. It was greatly appreciated.