Hello,
This might be a dumb question, but I looked all over the forums and haven't come across any reference to it. On two of my neighborhood screens, there is a lot (with a family living there) that has a big flashing blue icon that I can see from the main neighborhood screen. It looks like a plumb bob but bigger. Can someone please tell me why it is there and why there is only one in each neighborhood? :?: :err:

thanks for your help

Could you provide a screen shot please? Sounds like it could be some sort of graphical glitch.

It will help if you post a picture but it seems you have something on that lot- perhaps a tree or something outside that isnt covered under the cep- this can cause some things to flash blue in only the neighborhood view.

This is what it looks like from inside the game. I have nightlife and when I am playing a nearby house, this is what the house with the flashing blue symbol looks like. Got any idea of what this is?

I saw another thread here with almost the same screenshot.

Ah yes, that is as LyricLee suggested. I think if you go into that lot you'll find that you have a tree which has been recoloured. If you change it to a Maxis texture it should look okay from the neighbourhood. If you have any other items that have been recoloured placed outside they will glow blue too- it's a known issue that there is no solution to at the moment.

Thank you for your help. When I went back into the lot to delete the offending tree, I noticed a bigger problem. One of my sims took the car to work and came home just as a child came home from school. The build/buy modes were disabled so the moveobjects code wouldn't work. The sim got stuck in the car behind the school bus (honking and PO'd) while the child got stuck on the bus. I don't know if they would die there, but it seemed likely. At any rate, I tried to get help earlier, but something went wrong with the modthesims2 website and I tried to fix the problem myself by uninstalling and reinstalling my game. Now, an entire series of unfortunate events has occurred which includes my game crashing on the "problem lot", my downloads not being acknowledged by the game (even though I created a new downloads folder with my backup info) and my neighborhood maps looking completely different. Sometimes this game is so remedial.

Well, I don't think the game is the problem here, there are probably a number of problems causing this. Can you give me more details- did you do a clean install (removing the registry entries)? Did you install the patch? Did you backup your complete neighbourhood? Did you back up your saved sims and lot catalog?

I didn't remove the registry entries, but everything appears to be OK now except for the houses that I had downloaded and not yet used (in the catalog?) I had to completely uninstall Nightlife, Uni, and the Sims2 then re-install everything. I had only backed up the neighborhoods and downloads folders. I still think that there is a problem with sims driving home from work at the same time their kids are coming home from school. There's probably some documentation of that bug somewhere but now I don't feel comfortable letting them drive to work. The cars sit in the driveway most of the time. At any rate, the original problem that I asked about has been resolved. I had to move the family out and bulldoze the house but at least no one's dead...
Thanks again for all your help!

Do you have your game patched?

I think so, when I tried to download the patch from the official website, it said that my game was already up to date

Did replacing the custom recolor fix the problem?

I couldn't replace it or remove it, I had to move the sims out and bulldoze the whole house because of the problems with the car/schoolbus and the game crashing after I re-installed Nightlife. I hated to lose that house, but my sims are more important than their dwellings.

All you had to do was recolor it.