I have been told that deleting Sims from the family bin can corrupt your hoods. After having done some tests with the hood checker, I am not sure this is true. I have a hood (my first hood) with 20 missing sims files, and initially I thought it was due to the many sims I deleted from the hood.

So I decided to run some tests with a clean slate. I deleted the entire folder of "EA Games", and ran the game, so a new "EA Games" folder created. I ran the hood checker, and everything was fine (no missing Sims files). I loaded up a hood , quitted the game, and ran the hood checker. Everything was still clean. I then reimported my downloads folder (CC content), and then ran the hood again, quitted the game, and ran hood checker. I found exactly 20 missing sims file.

It is suspicious as I did not deleted any Sims. As it turns out, my Downloads folder contains 20 animated objects (Beck's animals for instance)!!! So the missing Sims files in my original hood is not due to my deleting all the Sims, but the animated objects !

At least based on hood checker, deleting sims (at least Sims I have created) does not corrupt the hood!

I wish Mootilda were here.

I do not have the technical expertise, the sort of writing skills required, or the patience to explain why this is wrong, but it is. And if I knew how to direct you to the posts in which Mootilda explains how it works, what the Hoodchecker does and does not do, and how deleting characters corrupts your hood, I would. The assertion that deleting characters corrupts a hood is not some speculation, not some random untested notion. This is the result of years of experience, experimentation, and testing.

Please, someone, take this burden up.

I'll explain as much of this as I can as best I can. First when sims are deleted the character data is shredded, redistrubuted through the neighborhood's memory and slowly attached to other sims. Overtime this will corrupt your neighborhood, it depends on how often your computer references that sims shredded data and then the sims the data is attached to. depending on how often your sims leave and interact with other sims this could happen very slowly. some corrupted neighbordhoods can be managed for years, others descend into unplayable hell very quickly.

but you can test it for yourself and see.

The ingame button doesn't delete the sim. It just marks the sim as 'Unlinked' and messes with its character file.
You can however fix its character data and bring the sim back to life. There's a tutorial for that. http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_guide:Resurrecting_tips

Scroll a bit down and you'll find Celesta92059's tutorial.

Deleting sims from the family bin doesn't possibly/maybe or can cause hood corruption, it causes hood corruption immediately 100% of the time. Mootilda made this very clear and she made the hood checker. If she were here she would explain the why and how in ways that we can't. We are not Mootilda and I don't know that any of us are programers either, I wish one of us was so that someone could continue on her work. You can still look up her posts and see what she has to say on it. You will see she left no if's or buts, no maybes on the matter of deleting sims.

You are free to go wreck your game however you please, but do no not come and post those ways here for other new comers to do the same. Your sim is not deleted it is shredded, there is shredded data now floating around your game.

https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=468987

The problem with your logic is that you assume that a deleted Sim would show up as missing in the Hood Checker. The entire hypothesis relies on that assumption, and since that is incorrect, the whole string of logic becomes incorrect.

Like jo said, when you delete Sims, it becomes stray data that wanders around and puts itself in places it shouldn't be, which ruins things. Hood Checker has nothing to do with it, it's just an excellent tool that Mootilda wrote in order to try and contain the damage as much as possible.

Deleting Sims seldom results in "missing Sims"; more usually it results in truncated or "shredded" files being left in your characters folder. These can be recognised in Windows Explorer as files that are much smaller than the normal ones, usually well under 100 KB. This image shows the files for 2 Sims that I deleted when I should have known better:

This is what the same two deleted Sims look like in the SimPE Sim Browser:
They appear under "Uneditable", and the two coloured squares indicate that the Sims are Unlinked and have no character data. I think it is almost universally acknowledged in TS2 circles that both are highly undesirable states, leading to neighbourhood corruption. I may to some extent have "got away with it" with these two because I deleted them immediately after creating them in CAS, without ever entering live mode. (I did it because I had forgotten to make them sisters in CAS. After deleting them I immediately went back into CAS and created them again, this time as sisters. I should of course have left them alone and fixed them later in SimPE.) And, in addition to the two that I deleted, there are another 53 unlinked Sims with no character data in my 'hood. This is Maxis Veronaville and the other 53 were unlinked by Maxis! Now I continue to play this 'hood, but I'm not going to kid myself into believing that it isn't corrupted; I know, on the authority of people like mootilda with a far deeper knowledge of the matter than I have, that it is corrupted. I just keep playing it carefully with frequent use of the HoodChecker and lots of backups. . . . Because I love the 'hood and the Sims who live there.

It is sometimes possible to keep playing a corrupted neighbourhood for years, but it is silly to wilfully do things that other people have shown to cause corruption. Good luck with your game anyway!

That's very useful to know, Andrew.

I'm assuming, then, that if one were to just delete those smaller character files, that would not solve the issue. (Otherwise you would have done it). Does anyone know offhand why? Don't go out of your way to find out, I'm curious rather than trying to do anything.

ETA: And WOW, there are a LOT of those "shredded" files in the original three hoods, and even more in HP's ubermegahood.

Random discovery: I have three tiny character files in a brand new, custom hood, that I've definitely never deleted sims from - any idea what that would be? Could they perhaps be parents I used to give a sim recessive genes in CAS?

In fact, the only hoods that don't have small character files like these are hoods which have never been played - loaded, built on, never played in live mode. They have townies with full character files but no small ones.

@jimbbq

Mootilda was a very experience computer programmer.
Mootilda had extra programs that she used to look inside the game and found that there are mutable places that sim data is kept and we as the players base only have access to 1 of those with out that very expenses software, SimPE only looks in that one place and that is all we can look at.

To this end Mootilda made her program "HoodChecker 1.0.3 - Neighborhood Corruption Detector" to look only in that place which is the "XXXX_Neighborhood.Package for any thing else is in the core files.

Yes at this time you no longer see anything but go ahead and play that hood and after a while you will start having problems. (Some times you will never see the corruption but it is still there.)

For those who do not know of Mootilda:
Mootilda was a very nice simmer, who truly wanted to help the community. She made programs that could save your neighborhoods & maybe even your game. I sadly had never spoken to her. This is why everyone is using past tense-
http://modthesims.info/t/532820

On to the issue at hand..
I almost died when I found this out myself, so don't be feeling stupid or anything else. This is 100% a Maxis mistake, okay? Good.

The delete button for the family bin corrupts. No doubt about it. Don't say "but I have a chance it won't- right?" or anything like that. That's what I had though. Me = wrong. It corrupts. It unlinks it self from the character data or whatever and it some how latches on to other sims and such. As others have said, I wish I could explain it like Mootilda could. Anyways.. Pretty much, there is a way to delete sims (the safest way), but it isn't completely guaranteed to work. BACK UP YOUR GAME. Find the tutorial here: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...a_Sim_correctly

There is one exception to the rule about character files that I know of. That has to do with Sims who are assigned server jobs (waiters/waitresses). There may be character files that end in ".1". Such as the following:

N001_User00822
N001_User00822.1

822 is 10kb large, while 822.1 is 261kb large. That's because 822 contains the waiters/servers data used by 822.1 to perform their duties. So, 822.1 is the Sim, while 822 is data.

I think this is something the game does in later expansion packs (I don't know or remember noticing this in other expansion packs). Hood Checker doesn't report these 10kb files as missing Sims or other unresolved matters. So it's possible that a brand new hood that spawns waiters for the first time may have these low kb files.

I remember reading a post by Mootilda who was helping someone with deleting a Sim. She recommended Theo's Sim Delete addon for SimPE and I've been using that since. It is so much quicker than some of the other methods I've seen posted. Here is that thread and she also linked to the addon in post #5.

www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=495772

I understand that the game has been tested for many years and the problems found are real. But most articles I read about hood corruption are really old articles mostly from 2008. I would have thought Maxis had fixed some of the problems and hoods are no longer easily corrupted by something as simple and innocent as deleting a sims?

You do realize that the last SP, Mansions and Gardens, was released in 2008? These articles were written during the last phase of Sims 2 development. In terms of Maxis development, nothing would've changed since 2008, as they moved on to TS3. As for fixes from the community. I will just end up repeating what others already have said in this thread.

Please do excuse me for borrowing/hijacking the thread. But I do have a short question about Corruption and Hood checker as it being discussed in the thread I find it better to put it here then starting a new thread. Feel free to get upset and hate me if I'm wrong.

But reading about Hood corruption really makes me shiver. I have no experience whit Hood checker and want to know just what sort of problems it can solve. I know that my hood is corrupted because I have done some bad things over the years. I deleted 1 sim from Sim bin and moved 1 family using the false method. Is this something that the Hood checker can correct or do I need more tools for this? My hood is running good and have been doing this for many years but I do understand that something really bad will happen sooner or later . In some threads it's been talking about clearing cache and other steps but I have never done anything like that. So what I need to know is the following:
1. Is there a way to fix my hood or making it "better"?
2. What tools do I need? (My English is not the best when it comes to technical stuff so feel free to explain how the tools work if you want).
3. Is there anything else I could do to correct the effects of the "no goes" I have done? Can I maybe "bring the sims back" and minimize the effects?

As told: I'm sorry for my bad manners of breaking into this thread but I took the opportunity to do so. If you don't want to answer here, just send me a PM. Thanks you! And once again, sorry "jimbbq" for hijacking the thread.

marka addressed this question, but I'm just going to expand: basically, the problem is that there are references to the deleted sim in other places than that sim's character file. Any sims who had a relationship with the deleted sim or who had a memory or gossip about that sim will now have corrupted data in their character files. Any lot which was owned by the deleted sim, or which contains objects which were used by the deleted sim, will now have corrupted data in its lot file. The main neighbourhood package will have corrupted data about that sim as well. And as marka said, we just don't have the tools to find and delete all of those references - and even if we had the tools, it'd be an incredibly slow process, and way too easy to miss something.

Mrmo, you should definitely use HoodChecker. Corruption is a chain of events, basically - for example, you delete a sim and that sim's next door neighbour now has a corrupted memory; the neighbour gossips and now another sim has a corrupted memory about the deleted sim; and so on and so forth. HoodChecker can't fix everything, but it fixes a lot of broken memories, relationships, wants and so on, and by doing that it significantly slows down the progression of the corruption. The idea of having a corruption-free neighbourhood is a bit spurious, because all neighbourhoods get slightly corrupted just through EA bugs that no-one has been able to fix. But if you use HoodChecker's remove function regularly, you can keep your neighbourhood clean enough to work properly for a very, very long time.

@Mrmo There is no way to completely undo or fix the damage you have done. There are ways to minimize the damage for a while, but I am not very experienced in them and will let someone else go into more detail. However, I do know that you will need the HoodChecker, SimPE, and frequent backups. Make lots and LOTS of backups.

Remember I'm still a relative newbie to The Sims. I don't know what would have happened if I had deleted those files immediately after they were created. I wouldn't dare delete them now. In fact it was only several months later, when I started to use SimPE, that I realised that I hadn't completely removed those Sims. I created them in CAS and clicked on the button to save the family. As it was still saving I realised that I had forgotten to make them sisters. As soon as it finished saving I deleted them and made them again. It didn't really feel as if I was deleting Sims; it felt more as if I was just cancelling my last move. However those two 12 KB files are a lasting reminder that I really had deleted them. Because I deleted them immediately after creating them, without ever entering live mode, they never had any opportunity to develop any connections to other Sims, so no one can have any memories of them, so I've probably minimised the risks of deleting them, but I'm sure it still would have been better if I hadn't done it!

I presume that, apart from the character files themselves, there are also some references to them in the relevant Nxxx_Neighborhood.package file. Removing the character files would leave these references with nothing to point to, and thus increase the chances of corruption.

I've had a look at my own other 'hoods. There are no small character files in my custom neighbourhoods, so I suspect the explanation for yours is the one that d_dgjdhh gave in post #13. My latest EP is OFB. Character files are only created for CAS Sims when you save the "family", so you shouldn't get character files for "parents" you create and then delete in CAS.

Although I play Maxis Veronaville and its Downtown, I have Tarlia's clean versions of Pleasantview and Strangetown. I was perhaps a little surprised to find 26 of these tiny character files in Pleasantview and 19 in Strangetown. Looking at these 'hoods in SimPE show that these equate to the same numbers of unlinked Sims with no character data in each of these 'hoods. This surprises me a little as Tarlia's 'hoods are generally considered safe to play. I think these hoods are safe to play normally, but it is generally unsafe to try to resurrect any of these unlinked Sims, even in Tarlia's hoods, unless you know exactly what you are doing. People like Jawusa and marka93, who has taken the base game 'hoods right back to the beginnings, will understand these things much better than I do.

The Maxis unlinked Sims are invariably dead Sims who appear in the family trees of playable Sims. Deleting their character files would therefore be a bad idea as it would leave these relationships pointing to nothing. I suspect that these truncated character files were created by Maxis precisely as a 'hook' on which to hang memories and relationships to Sims who are no longer in the 'hood, and thus avoid this sort of corruption, but they made some mistake in the actual execution of the idea, so it doesn't work. This sort of thing is virtually inevitable in software development, but I do wish that Maxis had fixed it later!
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@mrmo backup your game and run the HoodChecker. The first time you run it you will probably get pages of errors, especially if your 'hood is based on a Maxis one. Save the report (as a record of what you've done) and then run HoodChecker again with the -Remove option. Then just keep playing with frequent backups and frequent use of HoodChecker. The HoodChecker won't fix the corruption, but it will mitigate its effects. If the 'hood does become unplayable, go back to a recent backup and play from there. If you've managed so far despite what you've done, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to go on playing your 'hood for years.

@AndrewGloria Have you considered deleting them with the method linked to in post 12 to delete them properly (or as properly as is possible)?

As I understand it, it's this. Most data about a sim is contained in the sim file. However, some data is not. There are various bits stored in other places, most notably sims wants and fears (SWAFs) and sim memories. There's also something about the SimDNA too though that is less of a problem. Memories, if you want to work with SimPE on it and/or use the bat box are also less of a problem. SWAFs are the main issue.

What happens when a sim is deleted is that the sim file gets shredded. Most of the data is deleted except for things like the portrait and name (which can still be used in game if other sims knew the deleted sim). Most importantly, what gets shredded is the referencing data to the external material - you lose the connections to the memories, SWAFs and SimDNA data. Originally, these bits of data were tied to the original sim by the sim's NID - a number, a bit like the GUID. The sim's NID gets deleted in the file shredding. The identifying NID attached to the SWAFs/memories/DNA does not get deleted though - these bits get severed and are left floating around in the data for the neighbourhood waving their NIDs about.

What can happen when a new sim gets created (or born) is that they can be given the original sims NID and THEN what happens is the old SWAFs, memories and DNA gets attached to the new sim. That's the corruption. So you end up with a toddler with adult wants because the original owner of the SWAFs was an adult you deleted. It's also why some people have issues and others don't - because it all depends on what NIDs the game generates as it makes new sims. If the new sim gets a unique NID, no problems. The corruption creeps and problems occur because, of course, this sort of thing is not supposed to happen. The new sim passes on corrupted DNA to their off-spring, people talk about disembodied memories (which get passed around like an STD), kids have innappropriate SWAFs that they can't fulfil (or if they do it throws an error).

The reason why SimDNA and memories are less of a problem is because you can identify them which means you can deal with them. Memories can be added, edited and deleted (well most of them) in SimPE's memory editor. You can correct hanging memories. Or you can use the batbox to deleteski the entire collection of corrupted stuffs and extraneous bits for the memories. SimDNA is labelled, fortunately, with the original file character number so you can find it. SWAFs on the other hand were identified by the NID and, yes, that got deleted. You can't identify hanging SWAFs (as they were called back in the day). Hence, permanent corruption.

Moo (and JMP of course) had a look at this and she couldn't fix it. If neither her nor Pescado could do it, we are not going to fix it. This information is well known, and as Klaatje says, was extensively written about towards the end of the game cycle in 2008.

Edit to add: AFAIK, Pescado's deleted2 method (and Theo's which is based on that) - preps a sim for delete by FIRST identifying the relevant SWAFs BEFORE deletion so they can be found again and sealed off. It does the same, AFAIK, for the memories and DNA which is why it's the only safe way to delete.

Thank you "AndrewGloria" and "esmeiolanthe" for the tips. I'm going to download the Hood checker next week to do some tests (I only play Saturdays and as the computer is off line I have do update the antivirus first). Yes, I do backup a lot after every play ( Windows backup + copying the Sims 2 folder to an other place at the HDD and to a USB stick). Maybe not the pro way to backup but I hope it will help.

That's pretty much the way I do back ups (although I use an external hard drive rather than a USB stick), so that should be fine. The difference between an external hard drive and a USB stick is just storage capacity, not quality of end product.

10kb? Ive two of those kinds of files in my recently created hood. All ive done is moving in sims from cas and some had kids in the game. Mine are only 1KB but I havent had any npc spawned nor have those sims with duties (I dont have any community lot yet and I use clean templates + all those mods no-_-generating mods) But the only ones that have been generating are taxi/carpool drivers, mail- and newspaper deliver npc/townies) I also have a characterfile that says N001_User00000. No number with 268kb.

Its good people mentioned about those files because Ive also wondering what they could be, especially in a hood where you only added cas, moved sims to another residental lot and then speeded up their relationships. So I definitly hope these three files will not bork the game in the future.