The game does not seem to like phones

1. sims and lots with phones freeze up / or won't load at all

How i found out this issue ?

I created a lot with no phones in it & a fam that doesn't carry cell phones on them

This is without any phone mods installed, just the normal Maxis phones

Any help with this ?

Are you using any other custom content? If you turn on testingcheats, are you seeing any errors? Are you using OneDrive or any cloud storage? Drag your Documents/ EAGames/ The Sims 2 Ultimate folder to the desktop and run the game. Does it work now?
Game Help:Game Problem^wiki

I got an error message typing testingcheats > unknown command <

No cloud storage, I turned that off in Win 10 as it'd seem pointless to save everything elsewhere other then the default C:\This PC\Documents\EA Games\
It didn't make one for Ultimate as I install the base game form my old disks successfully I might add under Win 10, AFTER that it would not install any of the Expansions
Luckily I remembered had The Ultimate Collection still on my external hard drive just in case I ran into this very issue.

The full cheat is this:
boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true

If you just typed "testingcheats" you'd get an error.
(TS4 uses "testingcheats" but it won't work in TS2)

--

- Are you using CC, mods, defaults, etc.?
- Are you using any CC related to phones (defaults, mods, etc.) - doesn't matter if it isn't showing, just if you have it in your Downloads folder.
- Any CC related to electronics in general?
- Mods related to knowing people in the neighborhood, etc.?

The family with no phones/cellphones - Can you play them without any issues happening?

Have you set up your game properly so it's running fine (graphic card is recognized, no random crashing or pink-flashing, using 4gb patch, etc.)?

As far as I know i'm not using any CC related to phones it's just the default ones that the game came with, also no hacks, I ran Clean Installer to check everything
And I ran trough the whole process of getting everything to work under win 10 as last time I payed the game was under win 7 w/ no issues at all, yea it's been awhile
that I've played so the whole win10 issue was new to me, but I manage to get through it with out too many issues, well other then restarting it a few times to see what
settings looked best w/ my setup.

Current in window mode w/ no border at 1600x900 using very little CPU, it says like 4% when running the game so memory isn't the issue or shouldn't be w/ 9 cores to mess with

Nod mods related to behavors (sp) Other electronics work fine or there be issues with them as well wouldn't there ?

And the fam w/ no phones on the lot or on them runs just great, just makes it a lot more interesting when folks dropped by to welcome you to the town

it's like my old saves got corrupted some how but it seems to have effected other sims as well, I can't open any occupied lot w/ phones in it, namely the default fam in town

It's weird. I wondered why I kept getting the unknown command in the cheat menu, let me try the actual one next, be back in a few.

Okay I just typed the command out & got this message from the game - Error In Cheat : Expecting at least 2 argument in boolProp testingCheatsEnabled True ?

^ Huh. Weird.
I copied it directly from my Userstartup file (I usually keep it always on), so there shouldn't be any typing errors.
If you already had the error window from before, did you try doing the "expand" cheat (no quotes) first to minimize it?
Did you try copy/pasting the cheat instead of typing? Could be an idea (very easy to type wrong).

Personally I prefer using either cheats that can stay on always, or alias cheats (swapping long cheats with shorter commands) via the userStartup file.

---

Have you tried running the game without CC, just to check if it is a bad CC item? Could be something you're not aware of. If the game runs fine without CC, there are methods to look through your CC to find bad items or mod conflicts (50/50, HCDU, and so on).

(make sure to backup your neighborhoods first, as removing CC can cause some issues with disappearing objects/CAS items, or other trouble. Simply copy the "Neighborhoods" folder from the Documents location, and paste it somewhere else than in the The Sims 2 folder. When you've found the problem item, you fully remove the "Neighborhoods" folder from the The Sims 2 folder and copy/paste in the backup "Neighborhoods" folder. Make sure to do it this way and NOT let the folders overwrite, or you could get trouble brewing in the hoods).

I just must of typed it wrong as it worked at last and it said something about command line phone something or other was the issue, must of been a left over from my last install of sims 2 years ago as I just copy / pasted by old saves from my external drive

Any how the game removed it & things are working again

Well I thought the game removed it... not so sure now... so confusing...

If you coped and pasted over an old save make sure to delete the cache files, thumbnail files and the hood manager file. let these regen (will take a while) for the new game. These store data from the old game.

Also don't let the files or folders overwrwite, but make sure to delete the folder(s) you want to replace, then copy/paste in the ones from the backup.

If you overwrite folders, you could experience some weird issues, since you'll get additional files here, overwritten files there, and it could all become a bit of a mess.

Clean Installer can't find the offending package at all... Error messages SAY it's there however MEH

Clean Installer isn't really the tool you'll want to use. It does show you some mods, but only a small handful, and whether they show up in red only means they're some sort of mod, not necessarily that they're good or bad or conflict with anything. The Clean Installer is more for installing + sorting out CC for houses and sims, not really for figuring out mod conflicts.

You can try the HCDU to see if there are any conflicting mods (not all conflicts are true conflicts, and some mods can work together even if they show up here, so you may still have to run some tests with the results you get)
https://www.picknmixmods.com/Sims2/...s/HcduPlus.html

If you get an error message (with testingcheats enabled), you can try "What caused this"
https://www.picknmixmods.com/Sims2/...CausedThis.html

There's also the good old 50% method:
https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?ti..._Custom_Content (flowchart if you scroll down + some other useful tips)

I did the move files trick ... now just reinstalling what I want all over again .... luckily most if it is from here ... also trying to clean it up by putting stuff in SUB folders in case some thing goes wrong I can just remove the subfolder instead of having to start from scratch again ... oy vey