After reinstall stairs/railings can't be recolored

Taikira wrote:First a big thanks for the install/fix cause with the exception of my stairs everything appears to be working great.

After reinstalling the game/expansions/packs based on your directions I added all store custom content and then restored my saved game and the mods it was based on. Upon loading I was notified that some objects were replaced which based on inspection appears to be limited to my stairs/railings/fences that had a custom color. The ones in question are the manor set. The entire house was designed on a previous install at 1.63 (I think).
I'm running on Windows 7 with a good processor/graphics card (exceeds requirements for all currently available games) 8g ram and a lot of free space.
I can enter the recolor window on the stairs after loading and it shows my custom colors STILL in the color slots tho the stairs are now default color. I tried deleting and replacing the stairs but the new stairs and fence do not allow customization.
Preferably I need a way to fix them without replacing them.. tho it SHOULD be possible (I have a staircase over a staircase and getting it that way involved about 3 days of screaming cause neither the upper or lower stair wanted to place properly if the other was already placed.
Reset PC, problem persists.
Started new game and new stairs of this type can no longer be recolored.


Seems every time I get one problem fixed in this game another shows up to take its place @.@

Taikira wrote:Thank you for the reply though I am posting to report it didn't work. Also didn't mention since I didn't notice it till after my revision but my stairs weren't the only thing altered when I opened my old save (I lost a pair of end tables in the master bedroom but failed to notice immed as game replaced them with ones that weren't eyesores). So even though as far as I can tell I have all store content I am still somehow missing SOMEthing that the all in one file I was originally using (games/packs appeared on comp in russian I think) must have had. When my bf gets around to playing I'll have him try applying your patch/fix instructions and see if he can get EVERYTHING(Bohemian Garden/Grandpa's Grove) to work cause he still has the russian version setup on his pc.

Is it normal for the game to take almost TEN minutes to save, have such severe lag in build mode you can barely do anything, and freeze in live mode -sometimes sporadically, sometimes for a few minutes with nothing special being done to cause it. I run Sims 3 by itself cause I already determined it doesn't play well with others AND set it to high priority with task manager every time I start it up but it still has major issues. It also HATES my house(leaving it when I focus back on it usually all I see are window meshes, then it slowly remembers everything else XD) but my house IS on a 64x64. Had these problems persistently and after deleting the files you mentioned to try and fix my poor doomed stairs.

I always suggest to delete those cache files, and they ARE safe to delete.   About the re-coloring problem, the best advice I can give for now is that you re-download all your .package store content. It's possible that such content can get corrupted during patching or installing another expansion (there are workarounds for that phenomenon too, though). But once this happens, the only way would be for you to re-download the stuff, and then replace all the old .packages, with the newly downloaded ones. 

Taikira wrote:I moved all but 5 save files (and their generated backups) to a different location and my save time is down to JUST over 2 minutes... about 20 seconds longer than bf's unmodded game. It is also running MUCH smoother so yay XD.
Also deleted contents of DCBackup leaving only my ccmerged file untouched though I doubt this had much effect as there wasn't too much in there.
My cache files are deleted daily when I start up.

I'm currently attempting a different store pack... the one i have is a collection of yearly files(i.e. Sims 3 Store Updates Year 1) which appear in scripts when game starts (I don't know if that's normal for decrapped store packages to show up as scripts). I don't suppose you know a good source for all the store content? Replacing it all... @.@... but still better than having to wipe Sims 3 and reinstall EVERYTHING.

Looks like some progress then ?

 I'm not allowed to post direct links to Piratebay, but I'm sure you'll find it yourself.   

Taikira wrote:Apparently that is the same set I got off KickassTorrents cause it told me I already had the torrent when I tried to get it so I agreed to update trackers and set it to get just the store yearly packs and fix.

So.. can you change the color of YOUR manor stairs/railing/fence? It's the ones that have the railing that matches this fence:
http://store.thesims3.com/productDetail.html?productId=OFB-SIM3:17068&scategoryId=11579

I am currently redownloading and will try redoing the store packages and fix files to see if that changes anything but I'm stuck waiting on dl though since it's the same files I already have I'm not holding much hope. You very helpfully verified I have everything in the appropriate locations. Since I can't play I guess I'll go take a nap XD.

UPDATE: Woke up, moved old store files to a backup folder in a diff location(I live by Murphy's Law XD) and then extracted the freshly downloaded store packages directly to my mods folder. Deleted my caches (actually I did this between the last two steps) and started up the game. My stairs/railings/fences still have the red wood color saved to them but are showing up default color (some light colored wood) and cannot be changed. Deleting and replacing with new sets of the same items switched them to "cannot change style". So no change... I will wait until bf bothers patching his game to see if HE can change their color or if you can do it I will start killing mods... though I shouldn't have any that would cause this problem (and pretty sure I had it pre-mod).

Thank you for your help and I will let you know the final outcome with bf's pc soon as I can get him to patch and test (asked the other day but his memory is as bad as mine and we are both easily distracted).

Taikira wrote:Maybe it's a patch level issue then cause when I built the house I could recolor it but I think it was only version 1.63.. it definitely wasn't all the way up to date like my current game. Figures it would "fix" the only railing/fence set I actually like XD.

So I either need to find one I can tolerate... or recolor my house to match the stairs. ...I don't see the second one happening since I made a version of my house like that and it just didn't look as nice. I guess it's time for me to go scream at stairs that don't want to place again ^^.

Update: Loaded my game today and my stairs now show up the right color. Only changes are that I moved Store Fix file (one that came with Store Update files) to Overrides and I installed CC Magic. I assume it was moving the Store Fix package but I'm not willing to change anything to test XD. It WORKS, who cares WHY!
I forgot to test if I can recolor them so will do so when I start my game back up(I like my information to be complete for future reference).

Now if I could find a way to remove play lag/freezes... it would be almost perfect (almost perfect due to other issues posted separately)

Good to hear that.   About lags/freezes...assuming your computer is strong enough, check out this topic here:

Taikira wrote:Well I might have a possible culprit.. by looking at people sorted by celeb level I have over 500 sims/animals running around... is that a normal number or kinda high? (sounds high to me)


My store content is in package form as well but when downloading the set I also got the Store Fixes from the same torrent (along with buildings etc). If it isn't moving that file the only other difference is CC Magic.. which I'm not sure what it's doing other than taking up space but since both changes were made after which my stairs worked.. I am NOT moving either of them XD.

Also I can recolor the stairs.

There is another difference: the "store fixes" included in that download are not *quite* the same as the ones from G4TW, which I'm using, though I'm unsure as to the effect(s) of this. But then...I could care less about stuff that can't be recolored.  

Taikira wrote:(...)

SUMMARY
PROBLEM: Stairs not recolorable
SOLUTION: place Store Fixes from rachelstoolbox in Override folder (assuming using Store packages from same torrent)

I'm usually trying to be careful with judgements about causality.    I'll leave the topic open for now, and maybe update it, later on.