[Zirconia Wolf]

** UPDATE ON MY QUEST TO CURE SEASONS WANTSLOT DISEASE **

(Yeah, I'm sure you're all just waiting with baited breath. Riiiiiiiight. )

Well, I finally managed my "play through" of the various Maxis "starting" pre-scripted family/event stuff on a clean (no hacks* ) install of Sims 2 & all EP/SPs up to Pets. Actually thinking (for a change) I promptly made backup copies of all 3 hoods, which I then stashed away on my "F" Drive (a removable 80 GB thingy) for safe keeping.

Then I took a deep breath & re-applied Seasons (with Patch) and Celebrations to my game. After booting everything up, I took a quick peek at a couple of my previous "problem childeren" (Cassandra, Circe, Buzz... ) where I found....everything looking perfect!

WooHoo!

Then I logged off & took a reeeeaaaallyy deep breath before sticking in my very well organized (and freakishly huge) Downloads folder. Then I added my user start-up cheat file. Then I did the "things that have to overwrite stuff in the base game files" routine (CEP, Gunmod's AWESOME light files, a Firplace txt & Wall txt) before deciding that I should really do a de-frag before going any further. (Mostly because I was scared to death to see what might be waiting for me in my game now! )

So I de-fraged.

And took the deepest breath of the day.

Then I booted up my fully loaded game.

And then remembered that I had to re-boot (again) to get the custom content to work.

So I did that.

And everything is still looking spiffy! Even the families in oh-so-fresh Riverblossom Hills (which were a major sorce of grief the first time around) are playing nicely. No blacked-out slots!

WooHoo again!

So- for whatever reason- there can most certainly be serious conflicts with both a clean install of Seasons and a "fresh run" of the pre-scripted Maxis stuff.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a game to get back to!

-ZW