The third part in my ongoing woes.

So I sorted them all out from my Package folder, moved them to my Mods folder where they're supposed to go, reinstalled them on the launcher...but it seemed like only new ones were displaying. To see if this was truly the case, I explored downward on the list, only to be met with some mysterious file staring back at me. And the launcher crashing. This file wasn't in the folder (I don't remember the name of it but it was very short, like V or something) so I couldn't erase it. So I ran the Dashboard program and found one wonky file, but it was a custom house. I got rid of it anyway. But THEN

THEN I look at my Mods folder and EVERYTHING IS FRICKIN GONE AGAIN. Only this time they aren't in the Packages folder either! WHERE ARE THEY? I SPENT LIKE THREE HOURS MOVING EVERYTHING!

Update--I found them in the launcher under Installed Content. However, they have yet to show up anywhere in my folders! And why aren't they in the launcher under Downloads like they've always been?

Without strange, unexpected things happening as described prior, here is how this is supposed to go.

We place sims3packs in Downloads. The Launcher reads them from there. If we choose to install them, using the Launcher, the installed content lands in dbc (custom) and ebc (EA store) bundles in the DCCache Folder. From that point, many of us remove the original sims3packs from Downloads and keep them elsewhere, the Launcher doesn't need to see those anymore as they've already been installed into the above-mentioned bundles with somewhat cryptic names like dcdb2.dbc.

The Mods folder and the Mods\Packages sub-folder have nothing to do with sims3packs and they do not belong in there. That structure is only for package based files, which are handled differently and without Launcher involvement. I'm not understanding why the Mods folder keeps getting drawn into this scenario.

The Mods folder was initially involved in the scenario because I was trying to walk him through the steps to determine if something in the Mods folder was interfering with his ability to use the dream pods, since there is no nice, helpful video of the process.

A handy first step is to see if Dashboard is picking up any problematic conflicts, which is when the Sims3packs all ended up somehow getting into Mods as rar files. (Still no idea how that happened.) Even if you don't find the problem there, a problematic conflict can have unexpected side-effects that turn up while you're wading through your mods folder to find a bad piece of CC.

And there is still no word on whether or not the dream pods were usable in a test.

No, it's where I put my .package files. It's where I've always put them. The Packages folder is inside the Mods folder, along with the Cache and Overrides folders. The .sims3 files go in the Downloads folder.

I've played this for years and that's where they've always gone. I followed the instructions for setting up custom content and that's what happened.

But yeah, running the dashboard and then having all of them end up as .rars just escapes me. And as I said, the only bad CC I found were some random conflicts.

Ok so you said everything is where it's supposed to be in tat other thread, right? So why aren't they there any more?

And when I started up my game to test if the bed works after all of this, it stalled out for about 30 minutes loading, then once it finally did absolutely CRAWLED. I couldn't even get one sim to answer her phone because it took so long to click on her to do so, even when I paused the game right on her and scrolled in all close. Took about five minutes of nothing but trying to get the menu that's supposed to show up when you click on a sim, and it never showed up.

EDIT--I tried again, and it still took really long to open but not that long, and still the menu wouldn't open. I can't click on any townie either. And every time I try, this time it lights up the ? tab in the pop-out menu and shows a bunch of nraas errors. Whenever I tried to click on someone that I wasn't active with, it would give a Whoohooer error. There were overwatch errors, and a lot of errors that I don't think had the names of mods in them.

We can't begin to tell you why NRaas mods are throwing errors until we see what the resulting script logs say, although in this case it sounds like those might be more of a symptom along with the unplayability than the real issue. But for script log interpretation, you would have to zip some samples together and upload them to us at NRaas.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/How+To+Upload
(free Wikispaces membership and NRaas wiki registration required to upload and open up a support thread)

More importantly first though, I think we really need to see some screenshots here that display in Detail View what you have in your TS3 game folder at its top level, your Downloads folder (if anything), your DCCache folder, and your Mods and Mods\Packages folders.

That's going to take a WHILE, and a heck of a lot of screenshots. Would you accept a video?

What's "Detail View"?

Four screenshots, maybe six or eight if you have lots of content? Sorry, I didn't mean for that to be a major project. Detail View in Windows is the one that shows each file in a row, with columns for name, size, modification date, etc. As opposed to just seeing a list of file names (nothing else) or big icons.

But I see you are already working with a colleague on the script error angle at NRaas.

Yeah, that's what I use.
Do you still want a video?

Actually, let's stay with the thread at NRaas for now. I started answering more over there because I assume J4Ks has long since gone to sleep given his time zone. But you can do one if you think it will shed any light on these file location mysteries.