The sims Please insert correct cd

Some time ago I mentioned that my computer would no longer play The Sims and that it just informed me that it could not locate the cd, even though the cd was in the correct drive and was not damaged in any way. Maxis sent yards and yards of help information, none of which helped. I trawled and trawled all over the internet, looking for a solution, probebly anyone reading this has done much the same. I bought The Sims 2 so that my daughter could still get her Sims fix via the more powerful laptop but we still yearned for the original sims, with all the expansion packs and all our quirky little characters and houses. Like Red Dwarf and its crew, or our big Brother House and the contestants that included President Bush, Tony Blair, Jordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cher. Rimmer is very bad at looking after parrots by the way, and it's true that Lister can't play the guitar! Imagine my horror when, after shelling out for a new pc when the old one finally died, at being presented with the same message. I gazed open mouthed, stunned, horrified, as I had blamed the problem on the old, dying PC. I think the shock of it totally emptied my brain and left room for the solution to burst upon me. A solution that Maxis should be yelling from the rooftops and dropping leaflets out of airplanes. A solution that doesn't involve scary fiddling about with all that technical stuff that lies deep within the computer and just takes a bit of time and cheering....sorry next door neighbours that I had to yell the house down everytime I got another expansion pack to work....think yourselves lucky that I didn't force you to come and admire each one like I did my Daughter and her friends. My solution to the "cannot locate cd" error message is based on the fact that I have The Sims Deluxe and all expansion packs.

If for some reason you have uninstalled The Sims, and consequently all the expansion packs, it seems logical to just put them all back on and expect to play again. What can happen is that you put the cd in expecting to fritter away an evening building a jigsaw shaped house for your hippy sim and you get the dreaded "cannot locate CD" message or "please insert correct cd". After much blood sweat and tears I realised that the first few sims expansion packs required you to actually play the game with the deluxe cd inserted up to and including holiday. After that you played with the latest expansion pack cd in. This has been forgotten, or has changed with newer equipment.Therefor, when re-installing all the expansion packs, it goes something like this:-
Install sims deluxe.
install house party then put the sims deluxe cd BACK IN and let it update itself, it might even prompt for the second deluxe cd, go along with it. To play house party you play it with the DELUXE cd in, not house party. For each expansion pack you install you must then put the deluxe cd in and go through the updating steps, every time you install an expansion...don't just try to bang them all on one after the other. When it gets to The Sims Unleashed, it will play from the most recent expansion cd and not deluxe.
Thus, if say you install deluxe then house party and try and play from the house party cd (which is what you tend to do, because later expansion packs played from the newest expansion pack cd) you get the cannot locate cd message unless you insert the delux cd....you then think that all it is doing is re-installing and you get cheesed off.....but it isn't re-installing, it is updating to the new expansion pack.

I hope this helps anyone who is tearing their hair out but I'm afraid I have not got the time to enter into correspondence  about it. You can leave a comment here and I will try to answer it or someone else might that visits.

Before anyone asks, the correct order to put the expansion packs on is - The Sims, Living it up (or The sims Deluxe covers both of those), House party, Hot Date, Vacation (On Holiday), Unleashed (from here you don't need to put Deluxe back in) Superstar, Makin' Magic.

Comments

If a reinstall won't work. Try finding a NO CD crack for the game.

Hugs

Trish

[Michelle C. Williams]

Many thanks to you for having this info posted! I went back to install my original Sims games on my new computer, and was getting stuck on this very issue. I knew there was a fix but had forgotten it, and was googling to no avail til I found your site. You are a tribute to your fellow Sims players! :) Take care, Michelle

[jen2]

Hi, thanks for the info! I've had this problem ever since last year but couldn't figure it out. Now it all makes sense.