Troubleshooting Corrupt thumbnails and lot preview

Discussion in 'The Sims 2' started by luckylush, May 30, 2006.

  1. luckylush

    luckylush New Member

    Corrupt thumbnails and lot preview

    My game plays fine except for the incredibly upsetting problem of the thumbnails getting corrupted. Not only that, but the corrupted thumbnails do not affect the lots or the families in any way whatsoever.

    I have found that when a lot's thumbnail gets corrupted in neighborhood view, one solution is to restore the neighborhood with a backup, and then enter the lot, type in boolprop testingcheatsenabled false, then save and exit. This would suggest that I've been leaving a cheat on, but the thing is, I haven't. And the problem keeps on popping up, and now it's appearing in other thumbnails, ones that I don't know how to fix.

    In detail, what will happen is: I'm playing a lot, I save the lot, and then go into Neighborhood view. There I find the lot looks corrupted. I enter the lot, everything is fine. Gameplay is not affected.

    With the other corrupted pics, I start the game, choose a neigborhood, click on a lot to play, and find the family pic is corrupted. Or, I start the game, choose a neighborhood, open the families bin, and find all the thumbnails corrupted.

    Is there any way to refresh these thumbnails in a way that will restore them?

    I have a Pentium 4 with 3GHz, 1GB RAM,
    I have an ATI Mobility Radeon X700 (256MB)
    Driver: Driver Packaging Version 8.163-050809a1-025922C-Sony

    Thanks
     

    Attached Files:

  2. person123

    person123 Frumpy McDoogle!

    Although I don't know how to help you, I just want to commend you on your proper use of grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc on your first post! It was so refreshing to read proper English, rather than stumbling through run-on sentences full of text speak. :)
     
  3. Mirelly

    Mirelly Active Member

    I second what 123 said.

    First check you don't have a cheat set up in your config file: userStartup in:-

    C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config\

    Open userStartup with Notepad and check to see it doesn't contain the line:- boolProp testingCheatsenabled true

    Second A harmless but efficacious cure-all for many problems is to delete the file called Groups.cache in:-

    C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\

    The game will regenerate a new one next time it starts and this can resolve a number of problems.

    I do have the old worry though that this is a graphics card problem. Laptops are notoriously fickle with graphics, though I must admit this example is somewhat unusual in its manifestations.

    One last idea. Look in the FAQs for the link to ATI (graphic driver updates) - there may be a newer driver for your machine but you'll have to plought through the options to be sure. The Sony "labelled" one you show as having may be the factory installed one and there's bound to be a more up to date one available. Although, quite how much difference it'll make is anyone's guess :eek:

    You could also seek the advice of the dedicated geeks over at MATY (links direct to Oops! You Broke It! Forum)
     
  4. luckylush

    luckylush New Member

    Thanks for the advice!

    I did find something fishy in the Config folder, the userstartup file was named userStartupcheat and the extension was .cheat. But it was 0kb and when I opened it with Notepad, nothing was there. So I just deleted it (along with groups.cache) and started up the game. Nothing had changed, unfortunately. Also noticed that although a new groups.cache file was created, there was no new userStartup file in the Config folder.

    My computer isn't a laptop, though I did try to update the driver, but to no avail. I just got an "INF error, Video driver not found". Which could mean all kinds of things according to the site, including the possibility I just clicked on the wrong driver.

    I also noticed that in one of your links, you list compatible ATI graphics cards. It lists X600, X800, but skips the one I have, X700. i find it hard to believe that this is a graphics card problem, although it could very well be the cause. I mean, wouldn't thumbnails be the least of the graphics card's problems? Also, I'm pretty sure, but not positive, that my game had this problem when it was on my old computer (though it was less frequent), and that computer had a graphics card I bought and made sure was compatible (though it ran much slower).

    You wrote:

    First check you don't have a cheat set up in your config file: userStartup in:-

    C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config\

    Open userStartup with Notepad and check to see it doesn't contain the line:- boolProp testingCheatsenabled true

    Second A harmless but efficacious cure-all for many problems is to delete the file called Groups.cache in:-

    C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\

    The game will regenerate a new one next time it starts and this can resolve a number of problems.

    I do have the old worry though that this is a graphics card problem. Laptops are notoriously fickle with graphics, though I must admit this example is somewhat unusual in its manifestations.

    One last idea. Look in the FAQs for the link to ATI (graphic driver updates) - there may be a newer driver for your machine but you'll have to plought through the options to be sure. The Sony "labelled" one you show as having may be the factory installed one and there's bound to be a more up to date one available. Although, quite how much difference it'll make is anyone's guess :eek:

    You could also seek the advice of the dedicated geeks over at MATY (links direct to Oops! You Broke It! Forum)[/quote]
     
  5. luckylush

    luckylush New Member

    Thanks for the compliments, Person123 and Mirelly.

    By the way, after hours of searching, I finally found a solution to my corrupt thumbnail problem! And wouldn't you know it, it was in the tech support of the official Sims 2 site.

    I have a widescreen monitor, 1366x768, and apparently Sims 2 isn't too crazy about widescreen resolutions. So I modified the game so it plays windowed, and I changed the resolution of the game to 1024x768. Voila! all my thumbnails are cured.

    However, I don't think it cures the graphical corruption of lots from the neighborhood view. So I just make sure to enter the cheat "boolprop testingcheatsenabled false" before saving and exiting the game.
     
  6. Mirelly

    Mirelly Active Member

    Thank you for the updates. I remember staring bleary eyed at your screenshots trying to decide if there was a widescreen issue but then the idea evaporated and I didn't follow it up. The Groups.cache is always regenerated and it's purpose seems obscure .... I am still puzzled by your discovery that an explicit disabling of the debug cheat prevents neighborhood view lot corruption. That shouldna oughta happen; it's just plain crazy :eek:
     
  7. luckylush

    luckylush New Member

    That's interesting. I did actually crop both pictures before posting them; that pretty much obscured the fact that the game had been playing widescreen.
     

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