So for many many years, I stood back, wishing I had a computer that would handle Sims 2. Finally, I got one and I bought Sims 2 Double Deluxe Edition last Friday. I spent all weekend downloading/installing custom content that I found all over the net that was compatible with the edition of The Sims 2 that I have (Double Deluxe comes with Nightlife and Celebration Stuff). I made sure to Google where to install everything and installed everything where it needs to go. I started the game and went into a house that I downloaded (the houses all installed beautifully) went to furnish it and NONE of the custom content shows up... NONE. So I went over here and checked out all the FAQs, even the Fracking Idiots guide, followed everything to the letter. I've not sure what I've done wrong.

In the EA Games folder of the My Documents folder, there are 3 folders: The Sims 2, The Sims 2 Double Deluxe and The Sims 2 Store Edition. I wasn't sure which folder to install the downloads, so I created a Downloads folder in both The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Double Deluxe and installed everything in both folders.

If anybody can give me any help at all, I'd really appreciate this. I bought this game totally excited, looking forward to furnishing beautiful homes. I'm extremely disappointed and stuck with this game because it has been opened and you can't return opened software back to Target.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Sarah

Make sure you have custom content enabled by starting the game, going into the neighborhood and in the options button (three dots) check the "Enable Custom Content" option. IF that is not checked, then cc won't show up in the game.

It is checked.

Well, you're stuck with the CC, not with the game, it's not the game's fault that you're doing something wrong.

By the way, when you enabled the CC, have you restarted the game? Because the CC doesn't show up before you do this step.

Yes I have, Oprah.

I hate to ask, because it was probably in the FAQs - but did you unzip the files from rar or zip into .package files?

That's weird. Allow me some probably pointless questions, but:

- you're not installing the files as .rar or .zip, right?
- do you have the meshes to your downloads or are you just installing the recolours?
- if your downloads are recolours, do you have the CEP file installed?

No, I'm unzipping the .zip and .rar files and installing the files within, yes, I am downloading the meshes and yes, I have teh CEP file installed.

Did you try the Body Shop Trick? The manual method for enabling the game reading custom content? How about the test files?

TBH, I don't think there's anything we're going to be able to tell you that isn't already in the FAQs. We've accumulated those steps over years of practice helping thousands of people: that is the way that it works. You must have missed something or done a step wrong - if it doesn't work that way, it's just not going to. I don't mean to be discouraging here - I do hope you get your CC working... it's just I don't see us being able to fix it for you since you are the only one who has access to your computer, and we've already told you everything you could need to do.

Did you run the game before installing all of the CC? Can you tell us which of the 3 directories under My Documents contains the actual save games? I don't have Double Deluxe, so I'm not familiar with the new directory structure, but my expectation is that one of the 3 directories contains almost everything, and the other 2 are more or less empty.

If you can't answer that (because they all have lots of stuff), perhaps you could just take a screenshot of the contents of the 3 directories and attach them to this post. I'm just interested in the names of the top-level folders within each directory. Thanks.

I know that other people are running Double Deluxe with CC, so I'm sure that we can figure this out. Unfortunately, EA decided to change the directory structures after the last EP was released, so many of us have never seen the new format.

Hysterical,

What is 'the Body Shop trick'? Also, what do you mean by the test files?

That stuff is covered in the FAQs - it sounds like you haven't quite done everything.

http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...ame_Help:GCCTSU

I've attached a .zip file of screenshots of the directories.

I did do that and still nothing.

You did the Body Shop Trick, the config trick, and tried all the test files and reported back to post about it in about 20 minutes? I wish I could do things I'd never done before that fast...

I started with Sims 2 Double Deluxe also, so I feel confident that I can say that of the three directories mentioned, "The Sims 2", "The Sims 2 Double Deluxe" and "The Sims 2 Store Edition", only the first exists in my Documents directory, and that I HAD a directory named "The Sims 2 Double Deluxe" inside my Sims 2 PROGRAM FILES directory when I first installed. [When I re-installed on new hardware, I custom-installed under a different directory name, so my current Sims 2 installation has non-standard program paths.] "The Sims 2 Store Edition" also looks to me like a folder in the Program Files directory tree. I`d wager that Makenzie installed her Custom Content in the program directory tree, not the document directory tree, and I haven`t even looked at her zip file yet.

Edit: Well, I looked, and I was wrong. Weird. At any rate, "The Sims 2" is the correct directory. The other two are surplus to requirements.

The contents of the folders shown in the screenshots are consistent with mydocs folder not installation dirs.

Yeah, please see my edit.

Yes, it looks like she installed the files in the "MyDocs" when they should have been installed into C: drive under "Programs". I would think that only one of the programs has to be installed in the Sims 2 folder in "MyDocs" to run, not all three of them. Perhaps I'm wrong, but doesn't the game just read the last EP that was released? In this case it would be Double Deluxe?
I think that's the answer-the game isn't reading the files because there are three separate games installed in the folder when there should only be one. "EA Games">Sims2. Installing the other two into the EA Games folder is confusing the crap out of the game, and it can't figure out which files to read properly.
To have installed CC in all three folders would confuse it even worse.
If they have not changed the installation structure, she should uninstall the entire game, and have it reinstall in C drive (or whatever your main drive is), under "Programs"
Then the game will install the proper folders into the "mydocs" folder when she has the installation done. Then it might work with CC.
I don't know why they would change the basic directory structure for the game, but stranger things have happened.

Actually, I have to DISagree with you, FranH. Upon inspecting the images, I find that they look like the Sims 2 *Documents* directory structure, not the Sims 2 *Programs* directory structure that one would expect if Makenzie had installed the games into the Documents folder. ::shrug::

That's strange. The Double Deluxe folder contains all the usual subfolders while some of them are missing in the The Sims 2 folder, like Logs, Music, Movies and Teleport, even CEP is installed there. Otherwise the The Sims 2 folder is touched by the Body Shop and contains the Project and SavedSims folders.
Something is definately going wrong there.

Agreed. Makenzie, do you know how to use XCOPY from the command prompt? I`d like to conduct a non-destructive experiment, if you don`t mind. It will make temporary use of some of your disk space and clear a file-status bit that you probably neither use nor even know exists, but otherwise will not do anything permanent.

That's fine, just tell me what to do. I have since completely uinstalled Sims and reinstalled them and redownloaded a totally different collection from a different site, installed the collection file in the collection folder and the objects in the downloads folder, ran a test, and nothing still showed up. Whatever help you can provide I'll greatly appreciate.

Hokay.

First, I want you to XCopy the entire .../My Documents/EA Games folder to somewhere else, to clear the Ready-for-Archiving bits on all of the files. The resulting copy can be deleted.

Second, I want you to run the game and DO SOMETHING. I don`t much care what, as long as you DO Save what you did. When done, exit the game.

Third, I want you to XCopy the entire .../My Documents/EA Games folder to somewhere else, screen-capture the directory tree from the Windows Explorer window, with all subdriectories showing [don`t need any *file* information at this time], and post the resulting image.

Do you know how to call up a command-prompt window? There *should* be a Command Prompt icon somewhere in your Start menu; mine is in "All Programs\Accessories". Once there, the XCopy command will be easier to type if you make the My Documents folder your current directory. You can do this by typing the following command:

CD "C:\Documents and Settings\Blur\My Documents"

where \Blur\ is replaced by whatever you blured out in your original images. I`m sure you get the idea. For the copy operation itself, you can use the same command both times:

XCopy "EA Games" C:\EA_Games /M /S

This command will copy ALL-and-ONLY files with the "Archive" attribute set, and clear the attribute, in that directory and all subdirectories, and NOT copy any directories that would be empty after the copy. The first time we do this solely to clear the attribute, and have no further need of the copy. Running the game will set that attribute again on some of the files. The second time we run the command, we copy only those files that the game set the attribute on, which will include all of the files that the game modified, which is why I want you to Save your play-session but don`t much care what you DO during it. Capturing the expanded directory tree of the copy will tell us where the files it "touched" are located, and by extension, which directory it is using when you play. Once we have THAT information, we again have no further use for the copy.

Any questions?

Okay, what do you mean by XCopy? Like, right click the file, go to copy and then paste it on my desktop? Also what do you mean by clearing the Ready-for-Archiving bits?