Why does The Sims 2 crash on me when I try to use a custom house/lot that I downloaded?

Question

I downloaded and installed a new house, and when I get to the neighboorhood in the game, I try and click on the house to place it in the neighboorhood. But it always crashes on me and terminates! Why does it do this and how can I fix it?

Also, I the houses that I have downloaded don't require any expansion packs, so I know that wouldn't be the problem. (The houses needing the expansion packs to work and I don't have them.)

Answer 1

Oh man, this has happened to me before too. The house was a Frank Lloyd Wright Dollhouse (it was called) - made to look exactly like the little toy for Sim kids of all ages. I eagerly downloaded it.

I had at the time, only the Sims 2 and Uni. The particular house was on the Official Exchange and said no EPs required. It had no visible hacks, and I also used a hack checker when I installed it:
http://sims2pack.modthesims2.com/

And just like you, every time I went to the neighborhood view to install it, the game crashed just as I selected it and tried to drag it to a good spot. This happened no matter what neighborhood I was in. I removed it by going into the download directory and removing everything that had the same date of install that went with the house (well that worked for me). Then the game ran fine.

I still wanted that house, so I downloaded it again and had the same result. So again I cleaned out the files with the current date of install. I didn't write to the author to ask about if anyone else had the same problem and complained. I thought maybe my game had a glitch. I don't know. The house had a lot of downloads and a good rating, but I know many people rate something because it is cute, but they haven't actually tried it out yet.

So you have company.

My Documents \EA Games\The Sims 2\Teleport
My Documents \EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads

Just go to the teleport folder and *delete* everything in there (it should be empty until you do a fresh install & when the game starts it should be totally empty) -- then go to the download's folder and arrange the files by DATE MODIFIED -- and remove the likely files. Normally they have long nonsensical names like
63de250477567aed5502dd32da7e49dc.package --
IF confused... then just delete everything you installed the day you put the house in. Check that date MODIFIED. :)

Restart your game and check the houses. That one should be gone now. You can rinse repeat if you want. Maybe the download was a bad one one (internet hiccup). In my experience, it only happened once with just that one cute little house and I never could get it installed. Come to think of it, I should look it up and give it another shot. (and they say, "Animals can be trained", HA!)