Yup! I expected Sun Sims to be a rather quiet, eclectic-but-esoteric community with a very high ratio of folks who sign up just to download things that aren't available elsewhere.

I envisioned it as a friendly little local pub, in contast with the huge multistory community centers like Insimenator.net and The Sims Resource, and it makes me happy that it seems to have turned out that way! :D

I do have great respect and admiration for the awesome folks who run the big boards, but I am also very happy to leave the trials and tribulations of running megasites to them! :lol:

Oh that's right, there's a downloads section.:lol:

Hmm, well, before I go back there, I've got to obtain myself a new base game.:confused: :dontknow:

All set up, start the entire game installation, a real fresh install onto a brand new formatted disk installed for the purpose. Well, alright new to this machine, removed from another for Sims 2 specifically.

THUD. 91% installation complete and it crashes with

"unable to transfer file ~\~\objects00.pkg from installation media".

I broke disk 3.:pale:

Now I'm in strife. :banghead:

EEK! I think you can order a new CD from Maxis for a minimal charge if you're registered...

Ha ha, you funny lady, ha ha.

At the moment, MichaelG of EA support, and I are in email WWF.
That was my first question after making sure it was the disk faulty.
The reply was, had I tried installing again? Had I tried installing to a different machine to test the disks? Had I this, had I that?
Maybe it is the second-hand, ex-government Intel Pentium chipped machine. I've never had an Intel machine before. My first computer, a 286, was a genuine IBM chip, with 80287 math co-proccessor. And I ran DOS 6.22 and Windows 3 on that old girl. The 486 and 586 were Cyrix or IBM Blue Lightning chips, and I have used AMD "64 bit" CPU's, and Nvidea graphics exclusively, for many years for Linux.
Maybe I'm holding my mouth wrong, for Intel to work right?
Or it could actually be something crusty in this, this, this, I'm lost for words to describe this, Acer version of Winslows. It's gunky Charlie Brown, it's gunky.
How gunky you ask? My Acer AMD Sempron laptop at 1.8 Ghz, with Mandriva as the only operating system, out paced my AMD Athlon 2.8 Ghz machine on Windows.

Worst case? $90 Aust for a new base game set.
With a Bonus FFS pack if you please.

Tell him you looked very carefully at the disk and it has a shallow scratch all the way across it?

My guess is that it would less expensive to EA if they'd just replace the disk without worrying about it.

Yeah, it's one disk out of 3, and they don't give you a new license code, and you're paying like $10 US, so it's really no skin off their noses!

Yup, whereas having customer support people invest their time in futile excercises in trying to find out if the disk is really broken definitely costs them money.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Stupid ratzin fratzin Intel, jump up and down, shoot it, shoot it.:zipped:

Oh, hello, didn't see you there.:angel12:
Well, I managed to get the game installed. At least I think I did, it crashed on load up, so I don't really know if it installed properly or not.:p
Follow EA support instructions.
Load the disks, all 4 of them, one by one, make disk set copies, install from,,,, hell, that was fast.:asking06:
Start the game, kachoonk. That awefull Windows, "I just crashed it" sound.

That's it, tomorrow, the instruction book gets dusted off.:laugh:
And the optical drive gets upgraded, and it gets a better video card, and the 2.2 Ghz processor the motherboard can take, another 512 Mb of RAM.
And then, if it doesn't play nice, out in the workshop there is a nice, loud, nine inch angle grinder.:weg:

Did I mention I don't seem to get on with Intel very well?:p

Is it too trivially obvious to ask if you have an fan-created content installed when you're starting the game? :thinking:

Or over on the corner shelf in the office is a Mandriva disc :)

Speaking of discs, when was the last time you cleaned the lens in the CD/DVD drive?

Interesting that this discussion of angle grinders and Mandriva discs is in a thread entitled "Impact Craters"...

With some effort, one could probably produce an impact crater on an angle grinder with a mandriva disc.

Or if one is into chemistry more than physics, one might study the development of impact craters on CD's caused by compounds containing fulminate of mercury.

Hmm, fulminate of mercury, hmm.

Pour it all over stupid Intel machine.

No wait, I have do a DVD of Mandriva on the desk.


Impact craters avoided.

Got game fixed. I still don't get it. It just will not work on that Acer branded Intel chipped machine.

Now, I have a powerhouse XP games box, with an x86 64 bit 3.4 Ghz Athlon, 1 Gb of DDR2 RAM, an Nvidea 7600 GT with 512 Mb of VRAM, and 400 Gb of raided hard drives. EAGames, has its own 40 Gb Western Digital Caviar drive.
My Documents\EAGames\The Sims 2, now resides on a 120 GB SATA disk, of its own.
Three days of nothing but EA repairs, all fixed now, all EP's and SP's re-installed. Even got back my back-up downloads and Neighborhoods, all fully functional.
I'm going to send them on vacation next week, update patches depending of course.

But, my big beautiful server is no more. Make the Intel a Mandriva box.
That'll teach it. All it had to do was play a game.
Now, it will have to do math and real compute functions. So there.

BV won't be patched by next week. It just won't.

Maybe if you surround it with citrine and threaten to install MS-DOS, it will start paying attention.

Hey, you leave DOS alone. It's the last thing MS did that worked right.:laugh:
It didn't work much, but at least it worked right.

What did fit in the angle grinder a treat, was the Acer XP disk.
But, XP Pro is installed on the AMD now, the game is re-installed, all my downloads are back in place, and I have not lost a thing.
Don't you just love lots of backed up, "known good" setups. Luckily, I do backup, before I do a mod install, and all installs are done into a test directory first.

So now I install Linux to an Intel machine. I can do that.:) I have the DVD of Mandriva 2008 Beta 2.

I might see if a singing crystal can help the Intel. They do tech stuff.
So I'm told.

That's where having an operational CD burner would come in really handy! At least then it would be easier to store and organize all the backups!

Let me count the rays.

1, DVD/CD-RW combo drive in the laptop.
1 DVD +_ R, and 1 DVD/CD-RW, in the AMD.
And a snotty 52x CD-ROM in the Intel.

Oh oh. I foresee a problem with Mandriva installation.
Mandriva on DVD, Intel only has CD.
I see a swap job happening, and a case paint job.
Beige CD-ROM in black and silver tower case, not a nice look.
Silver DVD/CD-RW in beige and blue case? Must find black paint can.