Hi so, I just tried to load sims 2 tonight and recieved a blank error message with a red x and nothing else. This scared me as it's never happened before.
I figured it might of been to do with a mod i just downloaded - one from this site to have larger families which said to add a bunch of cheat codes to the userprops.xml
I also had gone on a CC spree downloading roughly 2000 hair and clothes and sims from TSR and Garden of Shadows. But all of that was in it's own labeled 2.28.15 folder in my downloads.

I deleted the mod and removed the cheat codes from userprops.xml and it still happened. I then removed the 2.28.15 CC folder from Downloads and it still happened. I then deleted all of the cache and thumbnails....still red x.

Perhaps there was something corrupt on one of the sims I downloaded...I downloaded probably about 50 sims from Garden of Shadows (I won't download TSR sims) and i don't use the Clean Installer so I install all the sims2packs the normal double click way. Maybe something was wrong with one of those.

But I've never had any CC issues before so that's what makes me think maybe I screwed something up editing the userprops.xml

I did some looking online about the red x error and one thing the wikia said is to check user files so I'm currently in the middle of backing up all my stuff ... but to do so I am going to save it to my google drive and my The Sims 2 folder is apparently 40 GB (ohh...don't mind my obvious cc addiction) so it will take AGES to save on to google drive once it finished compressing to a .rar which will take like hours in itself.

Soooo, if it could possibly just be something simpler than doing that, it'd be nice.

Also...if it is corrupt CC, is there a program like Delphy's Dashboard in sims 3 but for sims 2? I am much better at managing my CC addiction in ts3 than I am in ts2 sooo :p

Have you deleted your cache file recently? Accessory cache and groups cache? Do that and try to load.

Changing your cheat codes should not bother the game.
40GB is a LOT of cc. I have 20 and I know I have a lot. It should only slow loading not stop it.

Sorry missed where you said you had deleted the cache. Did you also remove the cigen and other file there?

To know if it's cc, make a backup and remove the entire folder except for things that will corrupt your game. CC that creates npc's and no sim loaded. See if it will load, make a test hood and play that a little while. Do not load your regular hoods.

You can just try deleting the userprops.xml - the game should just make a new one when you run it again.

I think those cheats should have been in userStartup.cheat, not userProps.xml.

Shows how well I read, I thought she was using a fancy name for the userStartup cheat file.

Good point Nysha.

I think you might have been right :o I must have read wrong when I was downloading the mod. I guess I looked in the right place and saw "User" so I assumed that was it.

I hope it's fixable.

The easiest (though not the quickest maybe) would be to remove your current The Sims 2 folder from your game folders in My Documents (stick it on your desktop) and run the game. This will regenerate the files for you nice and new and fresh. Then you can replace your CC in Downloads and your save games in Neighbourhoods and anything else you added to the game. If you are replacing neighbourhoods,
DO NOT
let any files overwrite - so say you are replacing Pleasantview, remove the newly generated copy of the hood from the Neighbourhoods folder before you put your old version back in there.

I'm not sure that'll be necessary - I'd think that after taking the cheats out of userProps.xml and deleting the groups.cache, accessories.cache and cigen.package, everything should be fine. Or have you already done that, OP, and still had problems?

I agree Nysha but that's a sure fire way to make sure all files are clean - actually, as I said upthread, perhaps the simplest thing to do is just delete the userProps file and let the game make a new one.

I removed the userprops.xml and everything worked fine then ^.^ yaaaaaaaaay! I was a bit worried there.

Glad that worked.

PS, your cheat file is under Documents> EA Games>The Sims 2>Config>UserStartup.cheat.

The mod would have wanted you to place something like:
intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims 20
uintProp maxTotalSims 55
uintProp maxTotalHumans 40
uintProp maxTotalPets 15

In there. I use a larger family mod and it works fine.