The Sims!

I've been playing a lot of the Sims lately....the first game, not the second one. It's not that I don't like the second game, it has a lot of cool features like a child growing into adulthood and being able to get married and then getting old and also moving out to University. So I'm sure I'll get into it eventually. I want to buy the complete set of the Sims 2 once the Sims 3 comes out. That's what I did with the Sims. I bought The Sims Complete Collection (the game plus the 7 expansion packs) for $60 bucks at Best Buy but I don't think they sell it there anymore.

One of my favorite things to do in the Sims is download objects that some very talented and creative people make and offer to others for free! I've found so many cool furniture sets, wallpapers, floors, heads and clothing sets in my searches.

Here are some of my favorite sites to download from:

• NightTime Sims
• SIMcredible! Designs - Some sets available only for donators
• beewitched - Sims 1 Downloads by Fairywitch
• Around the Sims - Some sets have special objects (gifts) only for donators
• Moppet Sims
• Parsimonious
• TSR - The Sims Resource - All Sims 1 downloads are free, as is registration for the site.
• The Sims Zone
• 7 Deadly Sims
• Dincer Hepguler Website - Click on The Sims box to get gorgeous furniture and build sets!
• Atelier Quebec
• The Secret Society of Woobsha - Tons of free, hacked object for the Sims.
  
• Sims Interior Design - Some objects are for donators only, but lots of free stuff.
• COMHAIR Sims Stuff
• Marina's Sims - Great Sims 1 downloads, especially build items! Not updated anymore though.
• C&C Enterprises - Free site that specializes in hacked objects.
• Gnohmon's Sims1 Goodies - More great, free hacked objects, including a staircase that allows more than one sim to use it at a time.
• The Well Dressed Sim - Some items of all the sets are free. That makes most unusable but you may find some good items that can go with your existing objects.
• SimFreaks - Some freebies, but most are for subscribers only

Oh...whoops. Did I say some? Obviously I meant a lot. :P

In fact, I downloaded a couple of things while I was posting the links here. I really didn't mean to, as I have too many objects already. So many I think, that some stuff doesn't show up in the game. I am supposed to be going through them and deleting the ones I don't like. Oh, I use a great program to view the furniture, walls and floors without opening the game. It's called SimExplorer (available on this page) and it's so handy! The next thing I want to do in the game is edit the categories that the objects are placed into. I find that only certain objects show up in the different sub-categories and that the rest can be viewed under the "View All" tab.

Anyways, I have some work to do so I best be off!

My New Computer!

Well, I couldn't figure out how to fix my computer....so I bought a new one!

Staples was selling it for $664, which I thought was a good deal. Of course I went to a Best Buy store and TigerDirect first, but didn't find as good as a deal.

Here are the specs for other techie people:

• 2.66Ghz Intel Core 2 Dual E7300
  
• 4GB DDR2 SDRAM
  
• 640GB SATA 7200RPM Hard Drive
  
• Supermulti, Double layer, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM
  
• nVidia Geforce G100, 512MB add on graphics adapter
  
• 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) LAN
  
• High-definition audio with 5.1-channel audio support
  
• Front I/O ports: Five USB 2.0 ports, multi-in-one card reader, headphone and microphone jacks; Rear I/O ports: USB 2.0 ports, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, five audio ports, ethernet (RJ-45) port, D-Sub VGA port (VIA Convertor), Serial port, DVI port (on VGA card), HDMI port (on VGA card)
  
• Microsoft Windows Vista® Home Premium 64bit

I'm really liking it so far!

It's really fast, I can do so many things at once, like run Firefox, a computer game, music on my Winamp player, and my email. Even my old programs still work, there's just a secondary Program Files (x86) folder for them.

Some things I don't like about it:

• Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna don't work! Hopefully someone has found a fix for this, I just have to keep searching.
  
• User Account Control - Way too annoying, I've disabled it for now. It would pop up notifications even when I deleted stuff!
  
• You can't customize Vista folders by adding buttons to the toolbar. In Windows XP I used to add the Delete, Cut, Copy and Paste buttons to the top because I use them a lot.
  
• My folders don't stick to the viewing method I want them to. For example, a folder I've changed to tiles view will be details view when I open it again.
  
• The Witcher is still a bit laggy. I was hoping once I upgraded my computer and got a better processor (I had an Intel Celeron chip in my old one) it would run perfectly. But the video is slightly stuttery, and not flowing smoothly.

If anyone has any tips for a newbie Vista User, or if I'm wrong about the above, please leave a comment. Any advice is appreciated. :)

I'm just so relieved and happy that I got a new computer. It's gorgeous and I love it. Now I can get back to posts about computer games, yay!



P.S. I love how tiny it is! It sits right on top of my computer desk and isn't in the way at all. I just won't be able to modify it much as the case is so small, but that's okay.

Computer Issues IV

Well, no longer do I think it's a virus, but now I have no clue what's wrong with my computer.

Let me explain. Last night I reformatted both of my computer's internal hard drives and left the external hard drive turned off and unplugged from the computer. I reinstalled Windows XP on the main hard drive but got the blue screen of death halfway through so the installation restarted. The second installation worked fine, and Windows loaded and activated over the internet and everything seemed fine.

So I started downloading updates, and my anti-spyware programs I use, and Firefox but a lot of programs when I tried to install them said that they were corrupt. So then I figured out that I should update the Windows Installer to 3.1, so I downloaded that and installed it. But I was still having issues with installing stuff because files are corrupt or missing. I couldn't even install my sound driver, cause it said that was corrupt! And I tried to install my nvidia geforce driver from the CD, but then I had to remove it from startup because it kept on crashing the computer. And the one I downloaded from the website didn't work.

I was able to install Firefox, but every time I tried to run it the error message came up that said a serious error has crashed Firefox. I managed to update Internet Explorer to IE7, and that sorta works. Everytime I visited Facebook the browser would crash. The computer just kept on crashing and restarting! And it can't be a virus, cause I did reformat both internal drives. What kind of virus would that be? Maybe's it a hardware issue....I need to get the motherboard checked out.

I tried to install Service Pack 3 but it failed halfway through, and then Windows wouldn't load at all the next time the computer restarted. So I'm using the disks to try to repair the existing Windows installation. I didn't know it had to go all through the process of installing again though, I thought it would just replace a couple of files! At this point I must have installed Windows about 20 times, it's a wonder I don't know the key code by heart!

Anyways, I read a post in a support forum that said maybe Windows Firewall is corrupting the installation files, so I'm going to go home and turn that off and see whether that helps. I would like to be able to install my anti-virus software and run a scan. Wish me luck!

Computer Issues Part III

Alright, so I think I know what's wrong now, in a general sense.

Let me explain further. My coworker had given me the suggestion that maybe just my C drive was corrupted, and I should reformat the second internal drive and install Windows XP on that. So on Monday night I booted from my disk, and reformatted both drives and installed Windows on the second internal drive (I call this my Storage Drive, as it usually has all my pictures, video and music on it). Well, it didn't work at all, in fact it was worse than the previous installations of Windows. I'm not sure why but maybe it was a Master/Slave issue? The C hard drive did have the boot priority (I had changed it in setup but it changed back).

So I wiped out the Windows install on the Storage Drive and re-installed it on the C drive. And it worked perfectly! I was so happy.....the internet was working, Windows looked like it should've looked, everything seemed fine. So I turned on my external hard drive (I had backed up everything from the second internal hard drive to this drive) as I normally keep it unplugged, and that's when I started getting errors, and issues, and Windows crashing and restarting. The internet started crashing and I would download files and they would be corrupted. So I think I have a virus as everything was fine until I turned on the External hard drive. Maybe it was the autoplay feature that released the virus.

Anyways, last night (Tuesday) I started Windows in safe mode with networking and tried to download antivirus software from the internet but they were all corrupted files. I also tried to run Trend Micro's Housecall (online virus and spyware scan) but it didn't work. So then I just turned on my external hard drive and copied and pasted various files into my second internal hard drive. In case I have to reformat my external hard drive, I wanted to save my pictures, music, saved game files, my Sims data, my bookmarks html file and other important documents. I didn't drag over any programs or .exe files.

Tonight when I get home, I will reformat my C drive again and install Windows XP and leave my external hard drive unplugged and turned off. If I still have issues, I will know that the external hard drive managed to infect the secondary hard drive, and I will reformat both internal drives. Then I will make sure Windows Update runs(another thing I wasn't able to do because of the issues) and my anti-virus is running and I have all my maintenance and cleaning tools downloaded from the internet, before I turn on the external hard drive and attempt to recover some of my data.

Wish me luck!