Well, I did the complete reinstall and my neighborhood has shown up after 2 save, exit, and restarts. That's one better than it ever did since this problem started. I'm hoping this works out.

And after the fourth save, back to the case of the disappearing neighborhood. It looks like a complete reinstall doesnt cure this problem, at least not for long.

Draxon, did you install the patch?

Hi Draxon,

your problem really seems to be a different than mine. I checked if my bug would reappear after several times creating new sims, exiting the game and restarting it, but it didn't (I did it 6 times in a row).

I searched in another forum (it's a german one, so a link to it won't help you) for a solution to your problem and found the following:

You said that your custom neighborhood folder N00x is still in the Neigborhoods folder in My documents/EA Games/The Sims 2? So, open it and look at the files there. Is there maybe a file called N00x_Neighborhood.off?
If yes, rename it to N00x_Neighborhood.package (or just Neighborhood.package, that was not clearly explained in the forum). Try both then.
If not, try to rename the Neighborhood_00x.bak to Neighborhood_00x.package. Some people there wrote that their dissapeared neighborhood was restored after that, but not the latest version of it.

I have got no clue, if this will work for you. If you back-up the folders and files before modificating them, you can give it a try.

Good luck!

The neighborhood that doesn't show up doesn't have a Neighborhood_00x.bak file. I created a new one, again, no .bak file. Is that a result of the read-only problem?

I use windows XP home edition SP2, btw

The .bak file will only be there if you backed up your neighbourhood with SimPE.

I was having similar problems to everyone here. I figured out that my game could only handle a certain number of downloads before it started going crazy. If I keep my downloads to a minimum (no more than 300 or so for me), it doesn't happen.

When my download folder starts to fill up, neighbourhoods disappear and newly created sims disappear after exiting the game so I have stopped downloading for a while.

New sims/lots disapearing sounds like a readonly problem. If you've linked it to large amounts of downloads, it'll help us find the cause and prevent it.

The large amount of downloads sounds like a logical explanation actually. I know it has nothing to do with the Holiday Pack (because I don't have it) or the patch (because I installed it months before the problem first arose). I've quit playing The Sims 2 until a definite answer and solution has been found. I'll keep checking these forums regularly in the hope that I'll get to play again someday.

It also appears to be linked to XP Home edition... Draxon, are you running XP Home?

I'm running XP Pro.

Hmm, I've been following this out of curiosity really but this is interesting - what would be the limit on the downloads? Does the game itself decide - somehow? I mean the poster above is talking about 300 downloads but I have app. 2500 files in my download folder. It does seem like a plausable reason for something like this but if it is the computer specs that decide than it is not one number, but different for all of us.

I don't think it's the downloads, I've had over 5000 for months and it was never a problem before (except for the loooong loading times)

I solved this problem (probably temporarily) by making the whole EA Gams folder in My Documents shared. That did the trick, and when I turned the shared option off later the neighbourhoods were still there. I'm using XP Home, by the way.

Here's another thing: I've always played Sims 2 on a seperate account on my computer but recently moved it back to the main account and deleted the other. That's when the problem started, if I remember correctly.

Makes sense... the reason I was suspecting XP home is because you cannot turn off simple file sharing at all... this means that you can't take ownership of folders and it's difficult to remove a 'stuck' read-only status. Sharing the folder would have helped with this.

I was running just under 9000 downloads when the problem started. The sharing issue makes a certain sense I suppose, but I still don't understand how the problem just happened suddenly.

Some people have reported that this happens after they have installed some Windows updates...?

That's very possible. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I'd just installed some updates when the whole thing started. In any case, everything's fine now.

Weird...

Might be Windows update, but wouldnt a lot more people experience it then? Also, I did a system restore to before the problem started. Didn't help. I may try the sharing thing, but it takes an hour to install Sims 2 +EPs. Might wait until the weekend.

Just so you know, reinstalling didn't do anything for me.

Draxon, most people I know don't even bother with the updates, despite my advice to the contrary.

I know reinstalling won't help, I'd tried that too. But I unistalled when I finally gave up, so the game isn't on my PC anymore. I just have my EA Games folder backed up.