Can't Buy or Build Hi there, My parents recently purchased Sims 2 and have been really enjoying the game. However, on occassion a few things won't function properly. For example, for a little while they could not move a chair anywhere. There were no actions for the chair, it was just on its own in the middle of the room and they could do nothing with it...not even sit. After awhile, they were finally able to move it again. Now they are dealing with something that really confuses me and I don't know how to address it. They have a Dell computer and use profiles for each computer user. On my dad's profile, the game functions fine. On my mom's profile, it function almost normal except for one thing....when my brother plays his family on her profile, he cannot buy or build. When he plays the same family on my dad's profile, those two options DO work. He will play for awhile, but won't save his game until they can figure out what's going on. On the flip side, if either of my parents play their families on either profile, they can buy & build fine. I thought that maybe deleting my brother's family and starting a new one might help...but it doesn't. We don't exactly understand why it's only occuring with his families and why it will work on one profile and not the other. It's hard for me to help them well or see exactly what's going on because they live in another state. So I'm appealing to you. If it's something simple that I overlooked or even something more detailed, I'd really appreciate the help. None of us can figure out what's going on. Thank you in advance for your help.
The most common reason for not being able to use Buy/Build is having "no CD cracks" or Software emulation programs on the computer. However, that doesn't explain why it's happening in different parts of the same computer. I strongly suggest that you talk to someone in tech support at EA and make sure to fill out a feedback form (which is what they use to figure out weird problems like this.) You can find it here: http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php The only other thing I can think of is some glitch whereby you were using the game in a non-administrative account, but that usually completely prevents use. (They decided to change that and it will be in the patch.)
The inability to frob a seemingly unoccupied chair in the middle of the room is usually caused by the "invisible sim" bug, where the chair is being used by a sim you can't see because he's mostly invisible, unless he has a ring, in which case you can maybe see the ring. To solve the problem, turn move_objects on, and delete the chair. This should get rid of both the invisible sim, and the offending chair. If you're SURE the invisible sim is nobody you like, feel free to set the chair on fire instead using the buyable fire.
Well I can assure you it's not that. They wouldn't even know what the heck that is anyway. It would make sense if they definitely used a No CD Cracks and it wound up blocking this from the entire game, but they don't use use it (or know what it is), and it's only for one certain area. No buy/no build for one family only...on one profile only. He can call to order pizza or groceries...but then can't get them because it won't let him spend the money. Very strange. We were thinking it may have been glitch in the non-admin account, but then we didn't understand why everyone else could do it on either profile. I'll look into the feedback link, though...thanks for that! No, we've been through that one already. The chair would say "Object not in use"...no one was sitting on it, nothing was on it...and they couldn't get anyone to sit on it or put anything on it. We did suggest trying to delete the chair by turning the move_objects on...nothing. It was almost like the game thought the chair didn't exist. Then after a couple of weeks of playing, it wound up correcting itself and they were able to do normal things with it and they eventually deleted the chair. This happened to me with a staircase...we didn't get it at all. But after awhile, I was able to do as I pleased with it. My husband thinks they simply may not know what they're doing. They're pretty computer illiterate, though we are pretty confused about the whole profile situation and how it's affecting the buying/building. We've told them to stick to one profile for now...we're wondering if playing the same thing on two separate profiles may be causing trouble on the game itself. I definitely appreciate your input!!
Others seem to use two (or more) different accounts on the same machine without any problems, as long as they are both administrative accounts. (But having a nonadmin account doesn't give you limited game options. It doesn't let you play it at all. By the way, the patch that is coming out has made it so that the game *can* be played on a limited account. Parents pointed out that their kids were likely to do no-nos on the computer if allowed in an administrative account.) It's not like you are trying to play the two at the same time on networked computers. That probably would cause some odd problems (and would be illegal unless you had bought two separate games. But I get the feeling that you wouldn't let that happen.)
