Vista - Sims 2 suddenly stopped loading

Ive been playing the Sims 2 and 6 expansion packs since May on my Vista 32
bit. Suddenly about a week ago it stopped loading, the disc drive runs for
about 30 seconds with the lights blinking and then stops. its not the disc
drive as music and movies still play. And Ive tried uninstalling all games
and reinstalling and while the games install and allow me to play if I launch
program after installing, if I go to play later, it doesnt load. One weird
thing i see when uninstalling that Ive never seen before is when I uninstall
each disc I get "Cant get string id 48". It lets me unistall, but Ive never
seen that before. And yes I have removed all my custom downloaded stuff and
the only thing Ive upload during the last week, was that last big Windows
update, but I was already having that problem before that. Any help to get
these loading again would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

"boxers54" <boxers54@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:17EEE9EC-0442-4090-B78B-706BD772FE01@xxxxxxThe first thing I'd do is try using System Restore to undo any changes made
to the system in the last week. It's possible and update or something
you've installed has conflicted with the Sims.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

"boxers54" <boxers54@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:17EEE9EC-0442-4090-B78B-706BD772FE01@xxxxxxMight have to do some registry cleaning. I'd go to http://support.ea.com and
fill out a problem ticket, or call their support line for assistance. They
can usually walk you through the problem, or maybe someone here will chime
up with something eventually. Could be your save files are messed up. If you
rename your Sims 2 Saved Games folder to something like Sims 2 Saved
Games.bak does the game startup correctly?

(Note, it takes a long time to copy the default save files from all
expansions so if you do this the game will pause for a while at the first
Sims 2 screen before going into the "reticulating splines" stuff.

-A.