Troubleshooting My Sims 2 Holiday Edition won't reinstall!

My Sims 2 Holiday Edition won't reinstall!

(Sorry, I posted this in the wrong place by accident the first time somehow.)

My problem: I had to uninstall Sims 2 Holiday Edition (my neice gave me it when she got Sims 3), plus Sims2 Season and Sims2 Best of Business because suddenly my Pleasantville neighborhood disappeared along with all my self-created Sims. And the other neighborhoods were there but just had the original Sims sans my additions and creations. I had saved everything to a separate device (MyBook), so I tried to reinstall the base version My Sims 2 Holiday Edition, but it would just hang up on disc 4. Now it claims it needs autorun.exe, but my computer says it can't find autorun.exe nor autorun.inf; that it is either gone or corrupted. I have no idea what autorun.exe is, but shouldn't it be with the Sims 2 disks? If it's something that my computer should already have, why would it be gone?

Here's info I found on my pc

Manufacturer: Gateway
Model DX4200-09
Memory 4.00 GB
64-bit Operating system

Windows Vista Home Premium
Service Pack 2

Obviously I'm a novice at this but would appreciate any help.

 

Thanks Flameback, I'll try one more time (this will make the 6th time I've tried to re-install.) I'll keep you posted

 

Again I answered in the wrong forum :(

Sokay, I couldn't get the Sims 2 to reload, but tonight remembered that I forgot to turn off my Kaspersky before I reload the last time. So I turned that off. I didn't try to reload this time. Instead I clicked on the desktop shortcut (that previously didn't work and wouldn't be deleted) and it brought up my Sims 2 and it included the 3 neighborhoods, but none of my created Sims. The heritage sims are all back in their unchanged homes (they were in my bin before). Now. My saved EA (with Sims2, Sims 2 Seasons and Sims 2 Best of Business) is back in my remote device. I moved it there when I tried to reload the last time. I still have no idea how to get my self-created Sims back out of that. Of course the Sims seasons and B of B have the most recent Sims and homes I created). I guess I need to start all over. I'll never be able to recreate the same Sims which were into their 3rd and 4th generation. But what, then, was the point of saving the game (as they said to do when I added Sims 2 Seasons and Sims 2 B of B) to another place if there is no way to get them back if something goes wrong with the game on my C drive? At least now I know there is nothing wrong with my pc, though. If I remove the ones from my remote drive with this basic, reinstalled Sims 2 in there, that will screw up the whole thing, won't it? But just putting back the EA from my remote didn't work before.

Also this reinstalled Sims 2 was not in my Documents, it was under My Programs (86).

So I'm wondering should I uninstall sims 2 again and then with Kaspersky OFF try to move EA from the remote device (it's there under Documents) over to my C drive? And should I move it to My Programs where it used to be or to Documents?

 

Okay when I posted the above in another thread in How Do I? Flameback told me: "You probably moved the "EA Games" folder from My Documents to your external USB drive. If you move it back to My Documents, it should restore all your neighborhoods and sims."

 

Then this was what happened when I tried to follow his advice (not that I don't appreciate his help, just trying to make it clear in what order these events occurred). I replied to him "Thanks Flameback! However; I moved it back to Documents in my C Drive, but when I put in Disk 1 (because as far as I know you have to have that in to play), it wanted to re-install. I also found "autorun" in the external USB drive under Documents so I moved it too to the C Drive under Documents too. However when I tried to reinstall it gave me the same message "can't find autorun you may not have permission to use it" or words to that effect. Looks like I'm the type who should never go into files and mess with them. I'm afraid that somehow not only have I screwed up and lost everything on Sims 2, but in fact, my pc is now fried because of an error I can't even identify. *sigh* I have Geek Squad but I think they only help with hardware. There's also a shortcut to Sims 2 that doesn't work but will not let me delete it. Thanks anyway, I guess I'm hopeless."

I tried some other stuff and posted this: "Okay, I couldn't get the Sims 2 to reload, but tonight remembered that I forgot to turn off my Kaspersky before I reload the last time. So I turned that off. I didn't try to reload this time. Instead I clicked on the desktop shortcut (that previously didn't work and wouldn't be deleted) and it brought up my Sims 2 and it included the 3 neighborhoods, but none of my created Sims. The heritage sims are all back in their unchanged homes (they were in my bin before). Now. My saved EA (with Sims2, Sims 2 Seasons and Sims 2 Best of Business) is back in my remote device. I moved it there when I tried to reload the last time. I still have no idea how to get my self-created Sims back out of that. Of course the Sims seasons and B of B have the most recent Sims and homes I created). I guess I need to start all over. I'll never be able to recreate the same Sims which were into their 3rd and 4th generation. But what, then, was the point of saving the game (as they said to do when I added Sims 2 Seasons and Sims 2 B of B) to another place if there is no way to get them back if something goes wrong with the game on my C drive? At least now I know there is nothing wrong with my pc, though. If I remove the ones from my remote drive with this basic, reinstalled Sims 2 in there, that will screw up the whole thing, won't it? But just putting back the EA from my remote didn't work before.

Also this reinstalled Sims 2 was not in my Documents, it was under My Programs (86).

So I'm wondering should I uninstall sims 2 again and then with Kaspersky OFF try to move EA from the remote device (it's there under Documents) over to my C drive? And should I move it to My Programs where it used to be or to Documents?"

and then I fooled around with it some more: "I just put Kaspersky back on because I have to go online and now I can't access Sims 2 again. This was not a problem before. I just left it off during installation and then put it back on and never had trouble with it before."

A few minutes ago I posted these further problems (again not realizing I should have posted to this thread) "Man, this is a nightmare. I took Kaspersky off, uninstalled Sims 2, and got rid of the shortcut finally. Kept Kaspersky off (and unhooked my server!) and reinstalled it. I finally got it to let me create a family (it locked up last time). I saved it, restarted and it worked fine again. (I've given up on ever getting my families back, I'm going to try to recreate the 1st generation). The instructions said that when I restarted the programs I took off to install Sims 2 should come back on immediately. But Kaspersky did not come back on. So I put it on manually and immediately the shortcut quite working and said it was possible I did not have permission. So I don't know what to do. I am totally unwilling to go online without my anti-virus hooked up and when I do it Sims 2 will not work. This did not happen when I had it before and when I added the expansion packs. So I either have to give up Sims, or not be able to get online when I'm playing. I'm anxious to add back my expansions packs, but almost afraid to do so. Guess I will never be online again because I play Sims 2 all the time but then I used to check email and Facebook. I can't see doing that very often if I have to hook up my server and Kaspersky and then take them back off again every time I want to play Sims. Does anyone else have this problem with their anti-virus once they install Sims 2? "

So I'm going to get offline, unhook my anti-virus program and just hope I can get it right. Meanwhile if anyone has any ideas how I can play the game and still have my internet, be sure to let me know.