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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 2nd Jun 2011 at 9:00 PM
Weird Glitch in Buy Mode and CAS
I'm having a situation where my game is not displaying all my Store objects in Buy Mode correctly. That is, most objects display the correct thumbnails, but a few are curiously empty. Now, the objects are definitely all there because they can be selected with the cursor, placed with the hand tool and also recoloured.

I should explain that this is pre-Generations game (I haven't installed the EP yet), and it is also a practically clean game which does not have any custom content (apart from a few mods like Twallan's and Awesomemod). The only objects, clothes and hairs that are currently in it are from the store -- in fact the Sims 3 Folder was newly generated by the game so I could reinstall all my sets in order and generally clean up and cull all my custom content in preparation for installing Generations (and I was simply cleaning it out because I had too much and it was quite cumbersome). Now it seems to be at random that several of the store objects have no pictures in their thumbnails, with only the green diamond showing up in the corner even though the rest of the set has proper thumbnails.

I have tried clearing all cache files, deleting the contents of the thumbnails folder, uninstalling, redownloading and reinstalling the objects and sets in question, but nothing makes any difference. The bug is random because all of the objects of the Regal set will show up and have pictures, except for the "Penelope" bed, which is blank; all of the objects of the Halloween Treats set will show up, except the end table, everything from the Castle Interior set except for the tapestry, etc. Even though the objects are useable, I do hate to look at the catalogue though and see a number blank thumbnails (Plus it makes finding things difficult).

In CAS the problem is even more weird and random -- all of the clothing shows up, but some of the hairs are strangely affected. Here again, there are no custom hairs in at all - everything is EA (from the game and its EPs and SPs, or from the store). Some hairs show up just fine and look normal in the thumbnails. However, there are several hairs which do not show up properly. The model is left bald, or with a receding hairline or with a very short hair style (like a buzz cut) which looks nothing the actual hair. The model also lacks eyelashes in these cases. These hairs can still be selected for sims as normal, and the sim retains the hair style out of CAS (these particular hairs also show up as "installed" in the launcher, as do all the objects mentioned above) as well.

Is there any way I can fix this problem with my buy mode and CAS and have everything display correctly as it used to do before I generated a new Sims 3 folder to reorganize my content? What could be causing this display glitch? I thought at first it might have something to do with the graphics card, but it displays everything else fine, and Sims, textures and objects look good during game play. (I do run the graphics on medium to low settings, however, for smoother performance).

Finally, here are a few of my system specs: my computer is a Dell Dimension E520, and is rather old, but it runs the game fine; the operating System is Windows XP; the Processor is an Intel Pentium D, and the computer has 3070 MB of RAM; the card is an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT (512.0 MB); I checked the drivers and everything is up-to-date with the correct version.

Just to repeat: the only cc in the game is Awesome and Twallan's mods (the problem exists regardless of whether these mods are in the game or not -- I have yanked them out but it made no difference to the display).

Sorry for the long explanation but any advice on what could be causing this and how to resolve it would be most welcome.
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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#2 Old 3rd Jun 2011 at 4:11 PM
In case anyone cares, I eventually solved this thumbnail problem with a backed up version of my thumbnails folder from an earlier install of the game. I still don't know why the new install of the game became corrupt in this way, but in case it happens to you, make sure you occasionally back up your Sims 3 Folder and then you can get another, clean, working version of the thumbnails folder (generating a new one never worked for me).
Test Subject
#3 Old 2nd Aug 2015 at 7:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by bettybrant
In case anyone cares, I eventually solved this thumbnail problem with a backed up version of my thumbnails folder from an earlier install of the game. I still don't know why the new install of the game became corrupt in this way, but in case it happens to you, make sure you occasionally back up your Sims 3 Folder and then you can get another, clean, working version of the thumbnails folder (generating a new one never worked for me).


I know this is super late but what if you don't have an old thumbnail folder. This is a new game plus it crashes my game
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