Hello

I have done searches to find the answer to this question but found nothing.

I am having trouble as my machine does not have enough space to play the sims 2 game.

It was all working fine until I had to add more stuff to my computer that is now jam packed full.

I have added an internal slave hard drive that has 30gb of free space and am trying to install it on there to play but when I do this and try to play I get the message:

"The Sims 2 is not installed on this system, or some required files have been deleted. This expansion pack requires the Sims 2 in order to run. Plase install the Sims 2 before attempting to run this application."

Could anyone advise me if this is possible to do or if they think I may be doing something wrond.

This is my first post and I love this site.

I am so desperate to play sims 2 again as I am having withdrawl symptoms from it.

Yes. You can install the game on any harddrive you have physically installed. I'm assuming you did a complete uninstall from the original drive before trying to install on the second drive (you can save your backup files first, then simply move them after the game is installed again)?

Can you give the exact steps you've taken so far? For instance, did you leave the base game installed on the master drive, install one of the EPs on the slave drive then attempted to launch the game? Are you sure you have the jumpers set correctly to run master/slave?

Hi thanks for your reply.

First I uninstalled the sims 2 & expansion packs from my machine (though I did leave the EA Games folder in my documents so as to keep my objects etc).

The I did the setups etc asking the machine to install the game on the slave drive etc.

Following that I restarted the computer and then clicked on the link to the game but got the message metioned earlier.

I have set the jumpers correctly as I can use the slave drive for other things.

Any ideas?

Don't forget to clear all trace of the sims2 from your registry.
This is a good place to start. http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=139059

Just a guess here but you might try moving the folders from My Documents to someplace like your desktop, uninstall then reinstall, letting the installation process regenerate those folders. Then try launching the game. If it launches, then you can close the game and move the data files from the desktop backups into their respective folders in My Documents. Then try launching again.

Also, check your disks and make sure there aren't any scratches that might be interfering with a complete install.

Thanks will try all of that and post back when done. fingers crossed

No Tried all of that but still having the same trouble. I don't understand this at all.

To me it should work fine but no.

Have you tried installing just the base game and seeing if it will launch? Are you getting any error messages when installing? Are both drives showing in "My Computer"?
You could try installing in safe mode. You could get an error message about not finding any DirectX9.0c compatible graphics adapters if you install in safe mode, but you can ignore that error. After you install it in safe mode, reboot and try to launch the game normally.

Hi I have tried installing the base game only and it won't work. There are no error messages coming up during the installation. Both Drives are showing up under My Computer and I can access everything else on the other drive.

I can't seam to get into safe mode on my computer any more as it just keeps looping back and restarting when I ask it to go into safe mode so I can't try that one.

If you can't get into safe mode this indicates you are having other problems with the PC. How much free space do you have on your primary partition, and the drive you are trying to install the game to?

Well thanks for all the advice on here.

I have now officially given up.

After installation of the game I only had just over 2gb's of space on my C: drive.

I think that there are other issues in my computer so have now installed the larger hard drive and done a fresh install of XP etc.

Thanks for all the advice.

Is it working well now?

Hi

Sorry for not posting back earlier. It is working on the larger drive. I am sure you must be able to put it on a slave drive and I might try that later. AFter installing my XP on the larger drive I can get the computer into safe mode etc. so I was obviously having a number of issues with my machine.

My only problem now is that the sims game occasionally crashes for no apparant reason when I try to create a new family. Anway thats another issue and is probably one of my downloads to blame or too much going on in Pleasantville.

It doesn't happen when I use the new neighborhood I created.

Thanks for all of your help on here.

You can easily test if the crashing is caused by custom content:
http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=139718
Well done for getting it working!