Being in a suddenly-nostalgic mood, I decided to have a couple encourage Santa to visit their house. He came, just as he was supposed to, only it seems his face looks very different from the last time I saw him, as in ... it's invisible. And apparently, he's lost his hat and hair as well.

The thumbnail comes out just fine ... you just can't see his face in the game.

Here is a picture:



Sorry it's Photobucket.

I did the CC test (of course), and unfortunately, testing vanilla causes an even worse problem. This time, the jolly old gent is in a suit, as in these pictures and descriptions:

http://thesims2.livejournal.com/6967014.html
http://modthesims.info/t/106676
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=492657

It seems that somehow, my Happy Holiday SP installation borked. I haven't the foggiest as to how. It worked great a few months ago. My files are all read-only, and I see no discrepancies with any dates. I am very, very careful with my gameplay and know the usual steps to avoid corruption. By heart.

I use physical disks, BTW. I do not have Double Deluxe, as some have reported on other threads. I have read the Simbology thread, but no one seemed to have any definite answers how to fix this.

According to the instructions in the first link, it seems so easy ... just find and delete two files and reinstall the SP. But if I recall, Happy Holidays is the one stuff pack that is a pain in the butt to reinstall. I've read account after account of people having problems with it. I've replaced objects.packages before with EPs, so I have a basic knowledge of the drill using that method. I make every possible effort not to reinstall a Sims game.. But I'm having problems finding the H05 and H06 files on the disk using Explore. Figures that the one SP that is misbehaving is Happy Holidays.

What is concerning me is that some people reported that even resintalling didn't work: http://simsfaq.tumblr.com/post/5815...claus-in-sims-2 (for example).

I do have the game on another machine (my test game), as well as the files on old backups (go to the last good version, I guess). Can I simply copy the two bundle files and move them to this machine? Will the world as I know it end if I do?

And it had to be Santa as well, so I can't use "change appearance". Great.

Anyway, if someone can tell me whether simply replacing these two files with two hopefully-good files will be OK, that would be great. I'm really hoping I can do it this way ... or somehow manage to fix this via Sim PE.

My HH installation borked too - I had to reinstall to get stuff back. Can't remember exactly but I think I had to uninstall the damaged version and reinstall. Don't forget to back up first if you do that.

You might have a look at the objects.package though and see if that's replaceable. Again, make a back up first.

Happy Holidays is such an oddity, Did you mean the objects.package for the Sims 2, or for Happy Holidays? I'm not sure how to locate a Happy Holidays one.

Every other SP, that's easy. I just tried one. It took me thirty seconds. Not Happy Holidays, apparently. I'm not even sure how you can simply uninstall HH without doing a complete reinstall. On all the other SPs, you can uninstall relatively easily. Better yet (and for me, easier), you can simply replace the objects file. I've done it for EPs. Not so for this sonofagun.

That was why I was hoping that replacing the two bundle files might work. But I don't want to completely corrupt my game in trying this. (Backups are essential before trying this, of course). I'm going to try getting Santa on the test game on the other machine now. I also believe (and hope ) that I did a complete game backup back when Santa did look normal. Perhaps I could use the last good configuration if the test machine's game doesn't work. Or just not use Santa anymore. Ever.

For reference, and as an example: http://modthesims.info/t/299788.

I'm wondering how I even corrupted the file in the first place. :/ I barely use Santa anymore.

EDIT ... The Santa on the test game on my other machine looks fine ... for now, anyway. (Knocks wood.) I copied those two files, as well as the objects.package for the base game. Fingers crossed this will work.

I just wish there was a way to see just how this corrupted .... what specific files were affected. Most of the times, it's the objects package, but not always.

If you can't uninstall, maybe what I did was install again. I wish I could be more helpful gazania but at least I can say I was able to fix it and so hopefully you will be able to too.

Just want to be clear here ... you mean take out the bundle files and reinstall the HH SP, or reinstall the whole blankin' game?

(EDIT ... SP, not EP. Oops.)

I just reinstalled the EP (and the add on). Can't guarantee it will work for you though.

Replacing the bundle files with good files, then deleting the groups.cache does not work.
Replacing the base game objects file does not work,

I'm leery of reinstalling if these don't work. There have been cases of people reinstalling repeatedly and still getting that freaky Santa. But I do admit freaking out myself when one of my Sims started playing red hands with this faceless figure. I quit out of that game in record time. Without saving.

I have had to do the objects.file route twice already, and have never seen a case where doing this failed. Not good. Where the heck is this stupid file with the borked Santa? (Rhetorical question ... I know others here have no idea. Not even the folks on SImbology could guess.) I'm guessing it's another file in the base game, and what is frustrating is that I can use a replacement file ... if I knew where the problem was!

And let me just get this straight ... did you mean reinstalling just the base game, or the whole thing? If it's the latter ... I rarely use Santa (and after this, sure as hell ain't going to start) or the New Year baby/Father Time. I still have the clothes, build and buy items, and might just avoid Santa and the New Year duo altogether. Red hands ... (Shudder). The idea of resintalling and having a good chance of still getting the same thing is pretty disheartening.

No, I just reinstalled the SP (and the add on pack - I got HH the first year it was released and got the add on pack a year later).

That's not too bad, at least. But I still can't figure out how to completely uninstall the HH SP. Taking out the two bundles is easy, of course. But I'm not sure if that does the job. Figures the SP that messes up has no uninstall file.

I should add that I did try to remove the two bundles and reinstall from the disk ... which proceeded to get really temperamental (didn't want to load for at least several minutes ... at the very least, I should have received SOME sort of message fairly early). When it started doing that, and I still didn't get anything after three or four minutes, I quit out. Since the mB size on the disk does not equal the size of the two bundles, I'm a little concerned that there might be more on the disk than just those two files. (My drive works fine, BTW. I used it to try to get the files from the other machine to work on this one.)

Most of the stuff I've been reading ... what little there is ... seems to imply at this point, with these many EPs and SPs, I'll probably have to do a complete reinstall if I want Santa and the crew back. In short, reading what others went through, I have two choices:

1. Reinstall the game or
2. Don't ever use Santa, the New Year's Baby or Father Time. Ever. If the game starts to really complain, and more stuff starts to disappear, reinstall.

The latter isn't too horrible ... this is the first time since getting the Super Duper Hug Bug that I've played any of the holiday figures, and since that was at least a couple of months ago, I would guess the last time I used any of these characters was about four months or so ago. By the way, I'm wondering if the Super Duper Hug Bug had anything to do with this mess. Previously, everything worked perfectly.

Ah, but that's a matter for more speculation. I wish I did know, though, what I did wrong to get this. Bad mod? Did something stupid in-game? As far as I know, no one still knows. (I did delete the hood where one of my user-mades started playing red hands with Santa, even though I didn't save ... just in case.)

Just for giggles, though, I might pull up Santa in Sim PE and see what he looks like there. Not that I know that much about Sim PE to fix him using that utility. Just to satiate my curiosity. It just seems odd that he looks great in the thumbnail, but not in the game. And the way this whole thing is playing out is bizarre. It's almost as if the game is treating his outfit and skintone like custom content. When I had the downloads folder in there, he actually was wearing the Santa suit. My case is slightly different from all the others I've read.

I can't see it being the SuperDuperHug (Don't let Jo hear me say that) - that's actually a debugging cheat from the developers. It gets wrongly assigned to CC stuff but that's it as far as I can tell. I'm really careful with my game and I still had problems with that SP - what makes things go awry is not always clear or particularly your fault.

Good question what happened. I still posit that may have something to do with it, since as you probably know, I have such a case of corruptiphobia that it's amazing how I'm still so addicted to this game. The BO fix might have prevented things from being a complete disaster, since at this very second, I still have all the clothes and buy items.

Or not. I think it interesting that in eight years or so, no one can still figure out how it happens, or how to fix it without reinstalling anything. And that perfect thumbnail, a legacy of Santa faces past, almost mocks you.

Someone once asked about how to extract the meshes for the clothes, skintone, beard and hat using Sim PE. It really does seem that he or she was on the right track there. Since my game for some reason obviously treats the clothes as custom content and not Maxis content, being able to extract just what Maxis used and re-download as CC might actually work in my case. But I simply do not have nearly the level of experience to do this.

I can do one more thing. Since HH was so entangled with the base game, I replaced the base game objects.package. I haven't replaced the M&G one. This wiki, however, doesn't mention M&G at all. I would think I would have to use M&G because it's the one that runs the game. Make a copy of the original, of course, as a backup in case my bumbling leads to problems I don't want to discover.

http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...Objects.package

If that doesn't work, then I'll live with my faceless Santa.

Did I hear whisper of the Super Duper Hug coming from this thread?

gazania, just my 2 cents, but I think this is just borked EA stuff. Replacing the objects package would have been my guess. Or maybe take out cc in case it's a default, but you have probably already done that. I had an invisible base game shirt from a default.

I've replaced both the M&G and the base game objects.package. I've pulled out the downloads, and wound up with the dude in the gray tux that most experience when they get this bug. (At least with the CC, I get the Santa suit, which I think is still a clue, but what kind of clue, I have no idea. ) I've stared at Sim PE until I was bleary-eyed. I still think there is some way to fix this, and the poster here who asked for extracted files a couple of years ago. might have been onto something, but it's beyond my limited scope to solve.

(Referenced thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=492657)

I don't have any hiders, either. Nor do I have Double Deluxe or any other combo pack.

I give up. Santa, Baby New Year and Father Time are now perma-banned from my game. Yes, I could reinstall the whole thing, but I really, really don't want to do that.

I'm guessing Santa is in some folder somewhere buried in the base game, but I haven't the foggiest notion where. Nor, apparently, does anyone else, including Boiling Oil, who would be more qualified than I to hazard an intelligent guess just what and where that file is located, which apparently isn't in the objects.package file. This problem apparently has been around for at least eight years or so, and the best advice still is to try reinstalling the SP (I guess by replacing those two bundle packages, since that SP has no uninstall file), and if it doesn't work (which it doesn't seem to at least 50% of the time ... lucky me), reinstall the game.

There are other files with skins, I know. My guess is that the problem affects one of those. But I've already meddled with the game enough by replacing four key files. Time to enjoy my game.

Did you try this:


Sorry to whoever wrote that, I don't know who you are. I found it last night and pasted it into Word.

Ah - that explains why it might have worked when I just reinstalled the SP - the two packages probably just got overwritten.

I tried it. In fact, that was one of the first things I tried. That's when the disk started acting up during reinstallation (just wouldn't do squat, except run hard .... and I know my drive is fine), and in a moment of concern, I cancelled the process.

Many others who have tried it found it wasn't successful at all, and had to reinstall completely. I think someone on one of the threads posited that there might be a registry entry somewhere that might complicate matters. I'm not sure, though, whether that registry entry is because the SP was originally part of Double Deluxe or whether it applies to all HH versions, but others who have reported a problem didn't have DDL. It seems to be a gamble. Some found it worked fine; many found it didn't work at all. One or two even wound up with error messages, and had to completely reinstall anyway. I do know that the file size of the SP and the file size of the two bundles vary significantly, so there must be something on the SP that isn't in the bundles. I'll try to open the files again using the SP disk and Explorer. I hope the disk doesn't misbehave again. (When I used the M&G disk to replace the objects file, by the way, the disk worked great.)

And I think ... though I'm obviously not sure here ... that completely replacing the two bundles with the "good" versions from my test machine should have done the trick if it was just a case of the two files. This leads me to believe the problem is nestled somewhere else.

I guess the best way to find out is to go through my base game folders and see if any were updated around the time of Holiday Stuff (2006), rather than 2004/2005. That would be a clue as well. But replacing that file may be really complicated. It turns out that even though it isn't reflected in the Sims' memories, Santa is in there somewhere .... hidden. I might have already corrupted my hoods (hopefully not my game) by replacing the bundle files in the first place. I'm hoping I didn't bring up another source of corruption. Sigh.

Note: No change in the other file one should check (Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TS Data\Res\Sims 3D). I looked through most of the other files, too. No difference in most of the dates, except for the ones I altered for other reasons (graphics card). I altered those long before this problem, though ... months ago. Other date changes shouldn't have affected the skintone, hat or beard. I think I'll swing by the game and see if the hat or beard was deleted. According to the manual, they should be in there.

After looking at the disk contents. Egads. All there is on the disk is the setup, icon and autorun files. Nothing else. No bundle files ... they're probably buried in the setup files. And the manual shows no way to successfully uninstall the SP completely.


EDIT ... After looking at the test machine's CAS, I see that the beards and hats did indeed disappear from my "real" game. Great.

And this was the one link I found how to successfully uninstall the HH SP. It appear that I would have to uninstall and reinstall everything.

http://modthesims.info/t/424961

Honestly, there must be a better way to get the hats and beards back, using copies of my test machine files, but I can't find any. Where else would these stupid things be, besides the bundles, object.package or Sims 3D files? (Rhetorical question again.)

ONE MORE EDIT ... I did find a changed skins file, but it's not in the place usually suggested by those who know better where to check, so I don't know if I can indeed change it without my game going ka-boom. It was in the TS Data/Res/Catalog files ... Skins, altered in late 2006.

Sorry about that, it could be different depending on which version you have I guess.

It's really odd. It's different from every other sp and it also can't be found in uninstall programs. I went looking for it the other day as I realized none of the items were in my AGS after I went looking for the holiday candle, couldn't find it and realized Holiday Stuff simply wasn't there, but it is in my main game even though I can find no trace of it in files.

It's just that it feels that the answer is juuuust out of reach. I bet it's a corrupted file that I can replace with a good file, though I'm still not sure if I have to replace the base game files, the M&G files, or both.

Unlike others with this problem, testingcheats and CTRL N isn't showing the hats and beards. I know for others with missing content, their stuff did show up. And the fact that the game now treats the Santa suit as custom content ... weird. As IChoseThisName wrote in one of the links I cited ... if one could extract the files for the hats and beards and try to load them as custom content, it may work. But I also know that is probably skirting EA's TOU. This is simply frustrating. It's as if a few people seem to almost come close to this mystery... but not quite.

If worse comes to worst, I guess I have to do a complete reinstall, since so many people do not seem to have luck with a partial one. So far, only Maxon and one or two others have been successful with the SP reinstall, from what I've gleaned from my Googling, but that might be because this happened early on for them. Those who got this later usually had to reinstall. I'll probably have to wait when I get more time if I have to reinstall, though. This might take a while, particularly with registry entries and the like.

I would also really, really want to know how this happened in the first place. I did the usual precautions, such as read-only files, and I think you folks know how paranoid I am with corruption. Taking the usual steps alone should have reduced the possibility of this happening. Whatever this is, read-only doesn't stop it, and it can happen without any clue as to why. And that concerns me. I so wish I could find the offending file, and know what to do if this ever happens again ... to me or anyone else here.

EDIT ... Does anyone know doodly-squat about that skins file in TS Data/Res/Catalog/Skins? It appears to show the modification date as the date you install the Happy Holidays SP.

I have that file copied and opened in Sim PE right now. Before I start ... no, I don't know much about Sim PE at all. Let's get that out of the way.

Annnd ... I see holiday-related clothing. Hmmm .... and within minutes, I see a European Santa hat tucked in there. Checked stuff. No ... everything is the same. File size is the same, property instance the same, etc. Everything seems to be in this file. So nothing officially disappeared.

I believe that besides the skins file, two of the three Sims 2 exe files in the base game also might have been affected by HH, which makes sense. This is most likely why simply replacing the bundles didn't work for me. HH seems to have entwined itself in the game like that annoying weed with the extensive root system that you can't get rid of.

EDIT ... I officially give up. I tried to swap the Skins file, and the situation is worse! I see nothing from the HH pack in there at all if I do that. The game is treating any remaining HH clothing as custom content. (Hats, beards and one set of Asian clothes disappeared entirely before I even tried anything.) The good Skins folder from my test machine, which is the one I grafted, looks fine outside of the affected game. Even the Skins on the affected machine looks fine. Putting the old folder back retrieved the remaining clothes ...for now.

It looks like I'll have to do a complete reinstall one day soon and hope everything works, though I'll probably do that when I have much more time. But I still would like to know how this happened. Guess I won't know. In the meantime, I can probably find some great substitutes ... even better ones, I bet ... on the Net for the missing items, and maybe learn to do a simple recolor in Sim PE.

If this is technically against the MTS rules about double-posting, please excuse me, and I will try not to sin anymore. I think this is the only time I deliberately posted back-to-back. But I noticed something interesting re the HH mess, and I didn't want this hidden in the many "EDITs" above.

It turns out that a couple of my female outfits also disappeared; specifically, the Thai dress and the Qipao. Something strange popped into my brain ... what if I tried a default replacement? Would it show up?

I couldn't find a Qipao replacement I wanted (the replacement has a knee-length dress which I already have in the game, and I wanted a full-length dress), but I did try a default-replace of the AM Cheongsam and the AF Thai dress. Voila! Those default replacements appeared in CAS without a problem. I am testing them in my junk hood now, and they seem to work great.

This leads me to believe that yes, the clothes are in my files, and they haven't disappeared exactly .. and the file itself is fine. If I were to default-replace an item that wasn't there, or the file was damaged, I would doubt that anything would show up at all. However, something is messing around with the outfits showing up in the game.

This is where a knowledge of Sim PE would actually help me. If I were to check the outfits that are still in there against the outfits that aren't (I'd use the Qipao), is there something in the file that somehow switched to an "off" position? Rhetorical question, I know. But if we found out a single file number that simply needed an extra digit or something, how wonderful it would be for those of us plagued by the Freaky Santa! No need to reinstall!

One thing I can also do is to check tutorials on hiders. Perhaps the game, for some really odd reason, is deliberately hiding the hats and clothes. If you use a hider and your Sim is wearing one of the hidden outfits, what would happen? Does he or she show up in the outfit?

In the meantime, I might as well enjoy the default replacements.

Yes, they would show up in the outfit - hiders only hide clothes from the catalogue. It's entirely possible to have the sim dressed in an outfit but for it to be hidden in the catalogue. After all, that's what people do when they use the regular hidden outfits (work outfits, skeleton, burnt skin, NPC clothes and so on).

Did you try pressing Shift-N in CAS? You need to have Debug Mode turned on (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true - if you don't have it on all the time, make sure you turn it on BEFORE you enter CAS). Once you get in there, press Shift and N at the same time. This reveals the skins that are normally hidden by the game. It might be worth a try though I suspect what has happened is your game has lost the reference to the skin.

I think I did try that, but I'll give it another shot later.

EDIT ... Nope. They don't show up. The qipao isn't there, nor are the beards or hats.

Don't get me wrong ... I still probably have to re-install, particularly now that I see a bunch of stuff is borked. But there is a side of me that wants to know "what". What specifically happened? The files are in the game. "Why" would be nice as well ... I still believe the best hypothesis is an over-zealous file-zapping utility, since I had such a situation with Sims 1, and had to re-install it not once, but twice, because of two different programs. (What I learned was that if you use a File Draino anti-malware program, make absolutely sure it puts an offending file in quarantine and does NOT simply obliterate it.) And I still hold out hope that one day, someone much more experienced and much more eager to deal with this mess might look stuff like this over and come up with some sort of way to avoid a re-install in the future. Even if the game lost the reference, though, and there's not much you can do about it other than start over, at least we might have a clue, rather than, "A bunch of Sim Grinches got into your game."


.

Double-post again, I know, but this may be of interest to those with UC who have the freaky Santa issue.

Apparently, there is a way to get clothes and hair back if HH clothes and hair go missing in the UC.

http://moonkistsims.tumblr.com/post...-happy-holidays

Well .... even though I have physical disks, my game is toast, anyway, so I thought I'd try this, too. I had replaced specific files with fresh, complete ones from another machine in the past, but that didn't work. I had not done a HH reinstallation. I did try to reinstall HH previously, but stopped when the HH CD started to really struggle. Besides, in most cases, replacing bad files works just fine. Not in this case, apparently.

So I held my breath, let the HH CD struggle, took out the files and did the reinstallation.

The good news: I got my men's Chinese outfits back.

The bad news: Everything else that was previously missing is still missing.

I also tried to default-replace Mrs. Claus' hat and the Thai hair to get them to show up. The first one worked. The second one did not.

I opened the files with Sim PE. Before, I spot-checked files, but now that I'm looking more carefully at them, many are, indeed, gone now. I again tried replacing the Skins folder with a good copy from another machine. This time, my other HH clothes stayed in the game (unlike the last time, when they all disappeared), but I could not get the missing clothes and hair back.

From a quick comparison between old and new files, I'd guess about 13 files in the new file are completely gone now (I know a few weren't before), including Santa's hat, Santa's beard, the European Santa hat and the Thai hair. All hair colors. The Skins folder I used to replace the bad one definitely had these. It's as if something is deleting or altering them when I put them on the affected machine, even if I insert files that I know 100% are good and complete files.

The Mrs. Claus hat and the Thai dress don't show up unless I default-replace them. The game then shows the defaults.

I'm not sure about the other hair/hats (I believe there is a child's hat, though I don't see it in my game. I'd have to check the other machine.)

Well, it was worth a shot, anyway. But I never saw this happen before ... to read-only, patched files. (And yes, I repatched, just to make sure.) I also deleted CAS thumbnails and the group.cache file. (And yes ... I changed all the read-only files before experimenting.)

I have done the fix you linked to on mine so that I have my missing HH toddler clothes. (I am on Ultimate Collection now) I have however, had this same problem you describe in the past on my old Vista. TWICE I lost an installation where I had to uninstall and then reinstall the game and they would be back, for a while, then be gone again. That was with my original Sims 2 game. So far as I can tell, everything is there, now, but the children's hats may be missing. I hadn't thought about those. I never uninstalled and reinstalled just to get my HH stuff back, but something would invariably happen where I would have to do a system recovery or something, and there I would be, reinstalling everything. I think it is due to the fact that there is no ordinary install/uninstall of that particular stuff pack. Just wanted to let you know that you aren't the only one that this happens to. If you are correct about the overzealous malware culprit, the fact that in the regular Sims 2 game, that particular pack doesn't have a normal registered version of it to show it has been installed, may be the reason why it is affected and "seen" as malware.