Morning Shorty-I believe my BSOD is game related. It doesn't happen unless I'm playing. Seasons and BV are both graphic hogs and I love having the beach lots in the regular neighborhood. I'm pretty lucky because I can play for several hours before I get the BSOD. Lasts about 15-20 secs and game comes right back. Knock on wood, has only crashed to desktop once. That was before I found the conflicting hacks. Needless to say I save on a regular basis. Been burned to many times with not saving often enough.

I too had never considered a no-cd crack...until now! They always sounded kinda "ify" & I guess I equated then with pirated games.

Seems a crack is really the only (smart) way to play BV- which I am determined to do...someday!

:blob7:

(That's a lil yellow version of me jumping up & down for joy! YES! I see BV in my semi-near future...)

Bet you can't jump as high as I am.:laugh:

The game disk is no longer vulnerable to damage, everything seems fine so far, there is still the sound hiccup at game load up, but that disappears once the data bases are loaded. It also seems to be less intrusive the larger your ~\Downloads folder is.:confused:
I run my game with Sarah's "merged 'hood", chock a block full of hacks and mods, once I had found the conflict in the weather system,
IT CAME GOOD.:blob7: :blob7: :blob7:

Roxy, it sure sounds like a game related oddball event. Especially if you get the game back again in a few seconds. It seems to me, like your laptop graphics card, is saying "WHAT NEXT?". The poor lil thing.:asking06:

When most people speak of a BSOD, they mean an actual MS Windows death.
Not a simple application crash and return to the desktop, but, a full on "the machine just died in the butt", system crash, and needs a complete restart.

And my XP system, has never done that to me. Not once, since installing Windows XP, have I had a BSOD.

I think what you mean is an application crash, but, if you get the game back again.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I don't know what that means.:p :p :p

You found a new one lass.:laugh: :laugh: Be proud.:blob7:

I was in a hurry and being lazy when I typed BSOD. I figure my blue screen problems is my graphic card going "oh no I'm overworked and I'm taking a coffee break". I've learned to live with it.

My laptop seems like it doesn't heat up as much with the no-cd crack. I always use a chill pad with this laptop. Had one laptop die from overheating. After I gave it to my nephew to muck around with, he found out that it was a problem with that make. I take my laptop to work with me and play sims. Always worried about scratching my disc before the no-cd crack.

Actual game play is great with the crack. I play with a lot of hacks also and loads of cc.

Amen! Testify! :angel11:

I absolutely adore XP (well, as much as one can legally adore an OS :confused: ) & have found it to be leaps & bounds better that that piece of mildew encrusted rat carcass called Windows 98.

That %#@! thing locked up at least twice a week & gave me the Blue Screen Of Death (which, when you think about it, is really a computer's way of giving you the middle finger) about once a month! Oh, the memories...NOT!:banghead:

Yes, I'll bet you're jumping higher than I am! Anytime a game problem can be solved without a total reinstall, it's cause for a high jump!

You never tried 98 SE? Or better yet Windows ME? (Millennium Edition)

Well 98 SE was the best of them, but ME? OOOH.

What happened on the C drive fell all over the mother board. It was awful.

Just out of curiosity Roxy.

What kind of laptop are you running Sims 2 on?
(EA released special laptop versions in Pet Stories and Life Stories, because people insisted on trying to play the game on their laptops even when EA documentation says it won't run well, if at all.)

You must be running some dual core nVidea mobile monster to be able to run Sims 2.

My laptop is almost 2 years old. It is a toshiba satellite with Intel Celeron processor 1.60ghz, graphics is ATI radeon xpress 200m series, 1gb of ram, os is xp home edition. I have all of the expansion packs and stuff packs through bv.

I played the life stories. Were fun in their own right, esp the Pets one. Couldn't figure out how to put cc in.

Oh, you meant the Blue Eye Blink of Annoyance. That's actually less annoying than the "stuff exploding into random triangles" phenomenon.

Oooh Roxy.:zipped: A Celeron? You actually try to Sim with one of them?:asking06: :confused: :confused: a Celeron 1.6? At least you gave it some work bench space with 1 Gb of RAM, cos it surely does need it.
No wonder you poor, poor, little puter is freaking lass.:laugh: :laugh:
Ask a nice geek to drop a Pentium 1.8 gb into it for you at least, should be able to find one cheap. It's an easy upgrade. As easy as a Ram upgrade on a laptop.

BEBA, not so bad.:confused: Just means it is really, really tired.:laugh:

Random exploding triangles is very bad, very bad indeed.
That is what happened to me, installed a flash fast new 7600 nVidea card and BOOM.:laugh:
Motherboard went grumpy. Big dummy spit.

Now back on the "ahem" upper bottom shelf 5500 unit.
At least it works, it don't like water on a lot, at all, but it works.

I'm running a GeForce FX 5500, and I updated the drivers (very hesitantly, with MikeD holding my hand in the MOO). No more exploding triangles!

I've never seen the "exploding triangles" at all, not even when I managed to seriously bork my game. (In RL, I have my own wood carving hobby-shack, so I've got lots of wood to knock on! )

My graphics card is an nVidia GeForce 7300 GS (over-clocked by the manufacturer) that I purchased specifically because it was a "gaming" card.

Actually, in all fairness to EA/Maxis, TS2 has never given me even 1/4 as much grief as TS1 did, at least when it comes to crash outs. TS1 crashed as a matter of course, while my only TS2 problems (that aren't CAS related- that's another topic!) were traced to either a bad UserStartupCheat entry or a funky download: i.e. operator error.

Of course I haven't gone BV yet, so I may be singing a different tune then...

Exploding triangles is a borked card not game.
Or as in my case, a mother board that is not borked, but not working properly either.
Either way. A very bad thing.

well I have the patch and the install and the no-CD. Game works and I have my downloads and Hoods working.

Can I actually get RID of securom? Or disable it in some way? This whole process is very confusing. I do want to be able to write disks for backup (not of Sims exes lol) and haven't dared try since installing BV in case it does something really nasty yet.


If necessary I can reinstall :P but don't wanna

Well, if you never ran the game from the Maxis executables, you shouldn't be contaminated with SecuROM.

I think BeosBoxBoy did write some instructions on getting rid of it if you're contaminated tho.

I dread the thought of having to reinstall. That's one of the main reasons that I'm so slow in installing expansion packs.

I'm sorry. I'm running out of ways to describe the same thing.

Once more, typing slowly. Yes, you do actually get RID of SecuRom.

If you install the game, as EA say, then patched it, then replaced the games original Sims2ep6.exe file with the No-CD fixed version of the same name, you have got RID, of SecuRom. Not there any more. Gone.

And, you can still write backups to CD or DVD anytime you want. That is just a simple copy of your ~\Downloads folder, to another location. Just drag and drop from your Windows Explorer window.
It appears Sony's SecuRom thinks we are all up to no good, so it does nasty things to our systems. But not, if it isn't written to the drive in the first place, or it is "ahem" accidentally overwritten.

The No-CD fix has had all reverence to SecuRom removed from the Sims2EP6.exe file. Check the file size, it is smaller.

I hope this eases your worries mate.
It does work, I've been running my game like this since I found out about the No-CD fix. OK, bit wobbly at first with some hack conflicts, but all OK now.
Also remember to repoint your desktop shortcut to the new exe file. It installs to point to the Sims2Launcher.exe, useless thing it is. EA are getting sneaky.


Edit.


Oooh bugger, I borked my machine. But luckily, not so bad.

Hey Rosie, we use the same FX5500 card, be careful with the NVidea Control Panel.
I just right clicked my desktop to change wallpaper.
Just for a change I decided to use the NVidea Control Panel.

DO NOT DO that, which I just did. Everything just stopped. Instantly, it all just stopped working.

It has taken 2 hours to recover from the weirdest "blue screen" I have ever seen.
Not your normal MS Windows BSOD for me.
Oh no. I just have to go for the total effect.
No sight, no sound, no 'puter. Nuttin'.
Not even a fast reboot, just a silent machine with a blue LCD screen, blinking its red power light, on and off, in standby mode.

Thank God for system restore points, eh? Reboot the system, try 3 or 4 times to get it right. And finally manage to press F3 just before Windows boots, click up one space with the up arrow key to, "restore to last known good configuration". Press enter.

And leave the technothingy alone Shorty. You know you frighten it.


I still can't figure exactly what happened, other than all configuration just fell all over my motherboard, when I started the NVidea Control Panel.
This may be one of those delightful displays of a dying motherboard. And may be nothing for anybody else in the world to fret over.

Putting in a new soundcard soon and with my machine any new hardware means a total Windoze reinstall so I will do it that way. I have run game from the Maxis Exes so it must be there.
Shorty, thank you for your patience :)
I didn't realise the No-CD overwrote it.

Don't the plug and pray things get you going?

The No-CD fix, is not just an overwrite.
When you go down that track, you replace the EA built game executable, with one rebuilt by FAirLIght, that has had SecuRom totally and for ever removed. The games file (sims2ep.exe) was de-constructed back to programming source code, the bits that are SecuRom were deleted, and then the source code re-compiled into the executable file that is the "No-CD" fixed Sims2EP6.exe.

You rename the originally installed EA game file to, for example, XSim2EP6.exe or NotSims2EP6.exe, then copy the new same named file in its place. It really is that simple.
But, you must install the EA stuff, patch, do not play the game at all, do not be tempted to look see at it. Then, do the little tricky bit.