I feel very lucky. I didn't uninstall anything before installing UC - they're both there in documents, in separate folders, apparently not bothering each other. I also have W8.1 and haven't had trouble with that. On my C drive, UC is under Origin Games and my previous Sims 2 collection is under EA Games.

ETA: Went into my old game just to check it out (actually using the old exe.). Doing that did overwrite all the hoods in UC. (That was also a fresh install so no hoods were killed during this experiment.)

Eta2: Was gong to just manually add the missing hoods, but decided to be careful and uninstalled everything and reinstalled UC. All is well, hoods are there.

Just so everyone knows, the automatic installer for CEP doesn't seem to work with UC. You have to install manually.

EDIT: Despite no installs being on this computer, my game loaded with no neighborhoods. No templates, no premades. Will run in admin mode to see if that was the problem.

EDIT2: Also my game did not generate a folder in Documents. Hope this isn't a compatibility mode issue as I can't use it on my copy of 8.1.

EDIT3: The 'hoods appear in the Base folder, but don't seem to be read.

It might be a silly question but I didn't fully understand. I don't own all the expanssion packs, all of the one I have are physical DVDs, so anything on Origin. I got my codes from EaGames Support Chat (they were actually really helpfull .______.) for Deluxe/Megaluxe (I don't remember) and the UC. Will backups work? Or I might lost my hoods (all of them custom)?

As long as you never had the store edition your back-ups should work. Just run the game after install so it will gen up the new stuff and then put in your back ups.

Marka, I've got the sims 2 Store Edition in my Origin but it's not installed. Will my games be okay as long as I never install it?

If you have never installed the store edition then all your hoods will work in UC.

I had the DD installed along with a few EPS all were CDS, I got a new code from the EA adviser and the double deluxe popped up in my origin games. But I did not receive the Ultimate Collection. Did it take a while for others to do this?
Edit: I just talked to the support person and got the code for it.

If you have sims 2 packs installed, can you just use a backup folder and pop the files installed in or do you have to reinstall the sims2packs?

Mine appeared immediately.

So what does the Collection have? All the SPs and EPS correct? Like Teen style stuff?

Yes. The Ultimate Collection includes all expansion and stuff packs.

You can find the official downloads here http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?tit...Exclusive_Items

Is anyone else having issues getting custom objects- and ONLY objects- to show up? I've started the game three times now and they're still not working. I've even checked the userProps.xml to make sure they were enabled- they were. I'm also having trouble with defaults showing up. Everything else is showing up fine.

I have to say, if there isn't any new stuff then I won't bother with the Ultimate Collection. I have all the EPs/SPs anyway.

I got 2 complete sets of the Sims 2 and I got the UC just because it was free.

Following the recent thread about the super duper hug bug... I'm wondering if this will fix it for most people. Since the computer considers this a fresh install, you shouldn't be infected by the bug, right? And so if you have one of the suppressor mods in, they also (supposedly) prevent you from ever catching it. So one would think that as long as the first thing you do is play a hood with a super-duper suppressor installed, and keep the suppressor in constantly, you shouldn't re-catch it.

Does that work or am I clutching at straws?

Don't know if it would be useful for anyone, but I noticed the UC messed up sims' lifetime wishes. For example, Oberon Summerdream with knowledge aspiration somehow ended up with "Reach Golden Anniversary" LTW. As I remember, he wanted to reach top level in the medical career before re-installation. Just for the record, he doesn't have secondary aspiration. Well, maybe it's normal when you re-install the game, I'm not sure.

Count me in as another curmudgeon.

Honestly, I strongly feel EA is absolutely not doing this out of the goodness of its heart. Not necessarily tin-foil hat worthy. But I admit ... it's a swell PR campaign. Egads, is it!

It's a great way for it to watch over its downloads, attempt to control pirating, ramp up its promotions (particularly Sims 4), tone down EA naysayers, clean up its public image, and gather demographic and some personal information. Again, the personal info bit is not tin-foil hat-worthy. Companies do it constantly. Your supermarket does it in the US, for goodness sake, when you get those shopper cards!

For those who couldn't get all the EPs/SPs, I admit this is probably a wonderful gift, and I'm glad to see more Sims 2 players around. Congrats, and I hope your games run smoothly. On a good note for those of us who prefer physical copies (and I do ... I personally find more advantages to those than digital), this will probably lower the price of those on the market, and I may spend a bit of money to pick up an extra good-condition M&G disk as a precaution, since that's the one I use now to run the game. Time to hit those thrift stores again! If this becomes wide-spread, and when Sims 4 comes out, more people may get rid of their old physical Sims 2 copies. I see the prices for new disks have dropped significantly already.

But I think I'll hold off on getting Origin in my life ... for the moment. Not saying I never will use it. Just not now.

Now it's time for me to google "Securom" here because I really am curious. People must have checked their registries to search for it by now, since it seems to be official on MTS that it's not in the UC collection. I just want something that verifies that more than one person did this. But it's hard to find in a search. I admit that it IS nice to see such a flurry of Sims 2 threads here. Reminds me of the good old days!

I just spent an hour getting rid of securom from my system after installing and running the ultimate collection. 12 gig download for nothing. I had to used a reg null program to get rid of it since the securom tool would not delete the registry keys.

Downloaded UC without any problems so far. I was wondering if anyone knew of any download links for clean templates other than the ones at MATY (they don't seem to be working for me at the moment).

EDIT: Silly me, found one! Here if anyone needs it http://digitalperversion.net/garden...p?topic=11452.0

EDIT AGAIN: Argh that one doesn't work either. Poo.

Oh, great. I was so hoping I was wrong and that EA finally took out the v.7 nonsense. I hoped it was one thing it did finally fix. But to those who do have it in their registries and are new to the game, or returning after a long absence: Many ... possibly most ... of you will not get any problems from it at all, so please don't fret if your game and your other programs run just fine. Enjoy your game. However, some people have experienced problems, such as with certain legit CD-burning software suddenly refusing to work. (I was one of those affected.) A few have reported worse problems. There are options for many who find it troublesome.

And clean templates? Meetmetotheriver's are the ones I use:

http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/

Clean or clean and empty: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751

Thank you! I can't believe I didn't think to look here on modthesims. I completely forgot about all of the little jobs that need doing when you install for the first time. Now to get the camera mod and lighting mod back in! Does anyone know what these extra patches have done?

Unfortunately I'm not having luck getting my old sim data into Ultimate. I did notice I keep getting two EA Games folders in My Documents. One of them is empty. I tried deleting the empty one, but it just regenerates. Is there any known reason for this?

It's a shared folder. Try opening the other one.