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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 6th Sep 2014 at 7:27 AM
Default My Origin Installing Nightmare
Greetings fellow Simmers. It's been a very very long time, since I've bothered to do any writing in any Sims Forums. Not since that 'Troll' incident that I ran into on this site about 4 years ago. I'm sorry, but I'm not in the least impressed by 'childish behaviour' on the internet. When you get to be a middle-aged adult, all of that stuff is completely meaningless. If it occurs, I'll just turn around & leave. Now with that said, on to the reason that I've 'briefly' returned.

Oh & I'm not asking for any help with any of this (well at least not from anybody on this site). I'm just writing this post as a warning, in case the 'Origin thing' happens to anyone else. Particularly since I haven't any idea of why it did happen.

So after a year's delay, Sims 4 has released. I had a pre-order in for the thing a year ago & it arrived on the 3rd. Now I've been playing the Sims series since the very beginning. I guess that must be about 14 years. How time flies, ha ha. All of them have their own styles, likes, dislikes, etc. so they can't be compared completely with each other. But I will say that the Sims 3 is my favourite. I've been playing it more than any of the earlier ones too. I love the wide open worlds & the ability to change the colours of everything. Sadly, by the looks of the pre-views, these things are gone from the Sims 4. Oh well, I was open to giving it it's turn too.

Now I come to the 'nightmare' problems that I've run into. So before I considered installing the Sims 4, I knew I'd have to 'bite the bullet' as the saying goes & install 'Origin'. I had been avoiding having to do so with the Sims 3. I remember when this 'thing' came out. It came out with the release of the expansion pack Pets, in 2010 I believe it was. In case you are wondering, I have all of the Expansion & Stuff Packs. The total of them together is 21. I also used to buy stuff from the 'Store', but that was before the arrival of 'Origin'. I got by just fine with their earlier Download Manager, to install the Packs & get the game updates. It still works by the way, which is a good thing, as you will find out shortly.

So before I did the installing business, I thought I'd better log-in to the Sims site & register all the Packs that I hadn't bothered to before. As I wanted the Bonus Sims 4 things. The last Pack that I had registered was Late Night, so there were quite a few of them. Anyway, I go to the site & type in my password. Shock number one, I couldn't log-in. So I try to ask for my password to be sent to me, but that didn't work either, it came up with a blank page error. I should mention that I hadn't logged into the Sims site in 4 years either

So what to do! I assumed it maybe needs this 'Origin' thing right now. So I go & installed the stupid thing from the Into the Future Pack, since it was the last one out. Then go back & try again to log-in. But it's no still. So I go to the Origin site & try to log-in there. It's also a No. But strangely enough it knew my email address & said welcome back. But it wouldn't let me log-in with the password that I had. So I asked it to send me my password, which of course led to the changing of the password. So I'm finally logged in with Origin. Now to register the rest of my games.

Problem number 2. It still won't let me log-in at the Sims site. Not with the old password or the new one. So around I go again. In the end I suppose, I'm now listed under two personas, one on Origin & one on the Sims. All on the same email address too. With half my Packs registered under the second one & all the earlier ones under the first one, the one I can't access. That first one, also has my Store stuff too & about $15.00 worth of Sims Points. To complicate matters even more, since the Store deals with money. I think I also used my normal (non Sims business) email address for that one. I've tried to contact the Sims Support about the matter, but I've had no reply yet after 2 days. And I'm not holding my breath either. It's a whole bloody mess! But wait, it's not over yet!

Problem number 3 & it's a huge one too! So I put the Sims 4 away for now, at least until I hear something back from the 'fools'. I decide to play my Sims 3. Hold your breathes people & grab your teddy bears for comfort, as this shock is bad! The game wouldn't start! So I go & look under the 'hood' to find out the cause. Everything looked fine in the My Documents folder. Though I suddenly noticed something strange under the Window's Start Menu Area, where all the installed programs are listed with their icons. About half of the Sims Pack icons have reverted to basic Windows styles & some just have a red circle & slash mark across them. So I'm off to check in the Program Files x86 EA folder where all the game's main stuff is located. Now 'this is the huge shocker'! There should have been 25 folders under the Electronic Arts folder. The 21 from the Sims 3, 2 from Sims Medieval, 1 from that Pattern Making program thing (don't get me started on that useless & annoying program, it caused enough problems in the past too) & 1 for the Create-A-World program.

Well now there were only 12 folders in there. These were the 2 from Medieval, the 1 from that Pattern thing, but now only 9 from Sims 3 (the main one, plus Ambition, Generations, Into the Future, Late Night, Outdoor Living Stuff, Supernatural, Town Life Stuff & University Life. All the rest were completely gone, including CAW's. As for the ones that were there, well most of the stuff was missing from their folders. What the 'Bloody Hell' people have you stupid weirdos done to my beloved Sims 3 game. Squeeze your teddies really tight now fellow Simmers, at the horror of it all!

OK, enough crying people, as I'm a stickler for the backing up of everything Sims & non Sims, so all my stuff is safe & my Simmies live on. It's just the angry & annoyance factor of the whole thing, as it should never of happened in the first place. Of all the computer games that I've played over the years, I've only ever had to uninstall & reinstall 2. The first one was the Sims 2, after somebody's faulty custom content corrupted the game & it took a complete reinstall to fix it. The second time was right now with Sims 3. As daunting as it was going to be, the uninstall & reinstall was going to be the only way to fix this horrid mess.

So out of storage came all 21 DVD cases & I lined them all up in the correct order of release. Next I rescued the stuff from the My Documents folder, Sims, Medieval & CAW. Next up was the one by one uninstalling of all the programs involved (including getting rid of Origin the Sims killer) using the Windows programs uninstaller. Finally the long long install session started. All told, it took about 5 hours to get the game up & running again. About 4 hours to install all the DVDs & type in those tiny code numbers for each. Also on each install, it had to check & see if the game was up to-date. One thing to note here, the game will only update to Patch Level 1.62.153 when you just updated outside the game launcher on install.

Next up I had to hunt through my storage disks, to find the last version of the Download Manager from 2010. As I couldn't get the game to update through the launcher to the last Patch Level 1.67.2, as it kept squawking for Origin & throwing up an error. But once the other was reinstalled over top, it shut up & downloaded to the correct Patch Level. Finally I reinstalled my last version of CAW & added back in all my stuff in both of them. As for installing all my Store stuff, well I learned long ago after the jamming up of their stupid Launcher, how to turn the Sims Packed files into 'working' Packages. You wouldn't believe some of the errors that I found in some of that stuff, yikes!

So all happy at last, but I'm still very much 'pissed off' at dear old Maxis EA & their Origin menace. As it stands right now, I'm not even going to bother ever installing Sims 4. It can stay in it's box or even be returned to the store where it came from. Bloody waste of money, for the annoyance that it caused. No amount of funny walks, too much smiling, tiny neighbourhoods, loading screens, etc. will ever change the mind of this old time Simmer.

Thanks for reading & may your Simmies keep safe! Best wishes from all of me - CoastalRebel (this was part of the name of my dearly departed real life Sheltie Kye, if there is any readers from the old Lost & Found Sims site days here, Kye's sister Kiri has also pasted on), SimmerTech (my original name in the Simming Community & I still use it. And no the website SimTech isn't me) & finally SEJ.
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