Alright, I used the NPC creator using the boolProp TestingCheatsEnabled true cheat and made Death part of my family. He appears on the family loading screen and in the house thumbnail. When you get into house mode he appears as selectable for about 5 seconds and then he and his selectable icon disappear like he is no longer a resident of the house. When you leave the house and return however he is back. How do I get rid of Death for good?

I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but adding Death to your family is a very very bad idea. You may have destroyed both your neighborhood and your game installation.
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...Hood_Corruption

Look to see whether any of your installation files have been modified from their original dates. Usually your installation files are in C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 <EP>, but that may differ depending upon your operating system, whether the game is on DVD or was downloaded, and whether you chose a custom install. If you know when you added Death to your family, you could try searching for all files in C:\Program Files\EA Games which have been modifed on or after that date. I believe that the user data for Death (the Grim Reaper) is stored in your Objects.Package, but I'd have to confirm that.

If any of your installation files have been modified, you'll probably want to uninstall all of your EPs and SPs and the base game, and then reinstall the game from scratch.

Warning: If you have the Store Edition, don't uninstall the game without fully understanding the special problems related to the Store Edition (specifically, that the update is no longer available and your neighborhoods may be unplayable without the update).

As for your neighborhood: it's probably corrupted and unable to be fixed. Some people decide to continue to play their corrupted neighborhood until it becomes unplayable. Others decide to scrap their neighborhood and start over, either with a brand new neighborhood, or with a "cloned" version of their neighborhood.

You do it by reinstalling. Making Grim playable messes up not just the game files for that neighborhood, but the installation files that affect your entire game, ALL neighborhoods, current and future. Reinstallation is necessary to fix this.

There are several other NPCs that cause this issue as well. In general, if your sims can't befriend an NPC without you using cheats, that NPC should be left ALONE. One exception is the Social Worker. She CAN be befriended and moved/married in without cheats, but she's not "safe" even so. In a way, this makes her one of the worst to mess with, because it's possible to do normally, without cheats. So be aware.

Could I just delete the family that has death in it?

No.

The problem is that there's only ONE Grim Reaper for your entire game, meaning ALL neighborhoods. When you make him playable, you essentially remove him from the game, and the game does not generate a new Grim. This will cause problems in the future whenever someone dies and the game tries to access Grim's file so he can do his job. When it fails to find that file, weird things start happening. Again, in ALL 'hoods - not just one 'hood or in one family/lot.

The way to restore the missing Grim file is to reinstall.

Well before you responded I went ahead and moved the family out of the house and deleted it.

Worried that the reaper might be messed up I then went into another house to test it. I had a sim killed and the reaper showed up as scheduled.

So maybe it is okay? What do you think?

Interesting.

I made Grim (and several other major big no-no NPCs) playable recently (a few months ago) for testing purposes, thinking it was okay to do this in a test 'hood. Worked a bit differently in my game. Grim (and Therapist and Rod Humble) refused to stay on the lot after I added them to the family. They walked off and could not be summoned back.

I killed a sim off (satellite), expecting the game to crash when it failed to find Grim, but it didn't. But Grim didn't show up, either - just a tombstone.

I deleted the 'hood before it imploded, but then found out I was going to have to reinstall. Not fun.

I have little doubt that your game is borked, new Grim or not, but it certainly doesn't hurt to keep playing until it stops working for you. Just don't expect longevity, because that's not likely.

If you have favorite sims you'd like to recreate in a freshly installed game later, you can extract their likenesses with SimPE. Unfortunately, I don't know of any tutorials to link you to anymore. Someone else should be able to explain it. It's really easy.

Couldn't I just package the sims I want to keep. Or perhaps even whole households?

This depends on how you are packaging them. If you have a mod that lets you package a sim in-game without the lot, it might be safe assuming the mod is just packaging the sim and not collecting relationships, etc. as well. But if it's packaging the sim with a lot, it's not safe. Packaging a household would require packaging the lot they are in, and thus is a guarantee that you will corrupt the new neighborhood unless you do a lot of work cleaning them up.

The SimPE method is really easy.

1> Back up the neighborhood
2> Open the neighborhood
3> Find "Sim Surgery"
4>In Sim Surgery, open the sim you want to save and click the "export to bodyshop" button.
5>repeat for any other sims
6>Open BodyShop
7>Find all your exported sims and clone them to get rid of the little bits of data that were left over. Now delete the ones that came from SimPE.

Now you have the appearance of the originals to use in CAS. Give them the same name, aspiration, personality, etc.

8> Get Sim Blender and adjust LTW, relationships, skill levels, interests, and anything else that needs fixing.

There is only one way to ensure that your game installation is still OK: check the dates on your installation files as I explained above, and see whether any have changed. Note that patches will also change these files, so check whether the date modified is on or after the date that you made the Grim Reaper playable. You may have gotten lucky, but if the files were changed, then you'll have to reinstall. Just remember, bad installation files will cause problems, not just with all of your existing neighborhoods, but with every neighborhood that you play until you reinstall.

Looking for a specific symptom isn't a good way to check, because symptoms can change depending upon the actual changes to the installation files.

Here is the FAQ about moving sims:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...elp:Moving_Sims

Note that you can clean your sims thoroughly using SimPE, then package them with a lot, then test them to see whether they are corrupt (a.k.a "The Hard Way"). There's no way to guarantee that this method is safe, but if you follow the instructions and test test test to make sure that everything's OK, then it may work. Be sure to backup as instructed, because you can destroy both your old and new neighborhoods using this method.

Mootilda, I looked at the program files and searched and nothing seems to even have a date past December and I made this error with death about a week ago.

Then you were very lucky. It really sounds like you managed to avoid corruption of either your installation files or your neighborhood.

Have you managed to get the Grim Reaper out of your family? It wasn't quite clear. Did you delete the family or the lot?

I moved the family out of the lot. Then I deleted the family.

Oops. So much for not corrupting your neighborhood. Deleting sims will destroy your neighborhood.

Oh well. At least you don't have to reinstall everything.

Why would deleting sims hurt your neighborhood? I've deleted tons of sims and never had a problem.

Dude...

Click the link Mootilda gave you about neighborhood corruption way back up up-thread.

I did look at it. It still seems strange though that there is a delete feature that you shouldn't use.

Nonetheless, it's true. In all fairness to the devs, I don't think they had any idea that certain in-game tools would not be okay to use. What chaps my hide is that they didn't disable them, or at least warn players with big bolded stickies at the top of each forum at the official BBS when they found out.

Trasfering everything to a fresh installed game seems like a bit more than I want to bother with presently. I think I'll just play it until it becomes too corrupt to continue. If I want to play after that I'll copy my downloads file and do a reinstall and make new hoods and sims.