Cache Files????
 

For some unexplained reason, last night my usually well behaived computer threw a snit & refused to read my Seasons disk. (I gave up after 20 repeted attempts. I'm stubborn! )

Looking for info, I stumbled across a thread over at InSIM where somebody said that every once in a while their PC would do the same thing, but replied that when they "deleted my cache file" the game would then load fine.

So...can somebody tell me where this mystical cache file is? (I've asked over on InSIM but the only response so far is somebody replying to somebody else's off topic comment. )

P.S. After a good nights rest, my PC was more than happy to load Seasons for me today.

**edited to add**

I should have explained that better! What I really need to know is if there is a faster/more direct way to clear the cache file than using the Disk Clean Up option. (My computer has a large hard drive & Disk Clean Up insists on scanning every inch of it which can take a looong time...at least too long to want to do this too often! )

I wonder if that was a reference to the file ...\The Sims 2\groups.cache?

There were a couple of threads in the Hullabaloo where Rose recommended deleting that, to fix some thing or another. If an answer doesn't show up here, you might try dragging that file out of your The Sims 2 folder and see what happens.

Yes, they're talking about groups.cache, not your browser cache.

My method: Open up My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2. There will be 3 or 4 files in there in addition to all the folders. Rename all 4 of them by adding .oops or something like that to the file name. Try the game.

Never heard of a bad cache file causing your game to fail to read the CD; learn something new every day! The usual symptom of a bad cache file is crash when the neighborhood screen is supposed to show up (after the full load, soooo frustrating).

Oops! Silly me! (I couldn't find any "Sims 2 cache files" so I presumed they where talking about my regulaur ones....of coarse I was digging around in the Program Files area, not My Documents! ) Thanks for the info!

I've actually had this problem a couple of times before, but I could always "cure" it by just putting the CD in another drive (I have 2) so I was really suprised when it didn't work this time!

As far as actuall "crash outs" (which would happen to me on a semi-regular basis with Sims 1) I have only had 3: Once when I stupidly tried to add the cheat about unlocking the "locked" lot tiles into my User Startup File, & the other two were both during an attempt at creating a pet in the CAS screen. Interestingly, the reason for those last 2 crash outs was listed as a problem with an audio file. (According to what I can gather from looking at the log files, there are lots of audio "errors" happening in my game. Go figure! )

Yeah, I've got a bunch of audio "errors" in my log files, too.

So do I... lots and lots and lots of "missing audio" errors.

Yep, more of that lovely Maxis/EA quality!

It's a special feature that they added to provided the extra amusement of deleting log files. :)

OOOH! I knew there was a reason for that!

I've never bothered to delete them.

Should I be?

Well, they crud up your hard drive.

Oh carp!

Like I need more crud on my hard drive! I presume we are talking about the log files in the Sims 2 folder & not somewhere else? (I don't want to repete my original cache file confussion! )

Yep, those are them. Let me see how many I got... 113 for a total disk space of 11.2 Mb. 11.2 Mb is no big, but that's a lot of files!