The Disappearing Icons Bug: The Likely Culprit

Archived from groups: alt.games.the-sims (More info?)

I ended up breaking my game again today, as all the job and memory
icons once again vanished from my game. I followed the directions that
I myself posted on this newsgroup to fix the problem, unpacked the
Objects.package into the Objects folder, opened the game again, chose
the same lot, and discovered that it was still broken.

(For some reason, I kept getting
\tsdata\res\objects\tsdata\res\objects\tsdata etc. when I was trying to
extract the package file, but that's not the issue here. Obviously I
was mistakenly extracting it to include the entire Objects folder)

I read over on ModtheSims 2 that someone thought it was the remote
control car that was causing the problem, and sure enough, on the lot
where I discovered this problem, there was a frat boy playing with a
remote control car that he had just stolen from somewhere. If the car
is in use when you load the lot, this will corrupt your objects file.
I inadvertantly tested this twice, then tested it in earnest a third
time, and each time the objects file became corrupted. On other lots,
the icons showed up as normal. When I entered the lot where a sim was
playing with a car, the icons disappeared.

So go into your lots and get rid of the remote controlled car. If your
sim is playing with it when you load the lot, get him to stop, delete
the car, and save. Your objects file will already be corrupted, so you
won't lose anything by saving. Restore the objects file from your
University CD and you probably won't see this problem again.

HTH,
C