Agonizing over whether to take "The Plunge" (Laundry Day update)

Hello, all. This is my first post here but I've been lurking around the forums for a little while. A few days ago I got the urge to play the Sims. It'd been a while since I did the whole "torrent-y" thing - years, in fact - and so I search around only to discover that I had all the necessary files already on my computer from a millennia prior. But it was just the base game, a rather shallow affair imo so I search once more and manage to find a torrent with all of the dlc. I acquire this, trying to remember how all this stuff worked and miraculously, there was no problem at all between the already extant copy installed on my computer and the copy with all of the DLC (up to Cats&Doges). Score! But, I'm not satisfied - ever. I need CC, I need the full updated version. I need them Pet Quirks.

Then I find you fine folks, and after some serious lurking and trepidation I download the update immediately preceding Laundry Day(at this point, I had no clue 'Laundry Day' existed >.<). Hesitantly, I follow the Read Me instructions best I can, hoping that the fact that I acquired all of the other content from sources other than you folks doesn't come back to bite me. I change the game file to the 'game_' and - wincing - I press extract to the appropriate locations and.... my computer dang near explodes. I don't think any of the files actually extracted (7zip said there were over 900 errors), because after a 30 - 45 minute period of intense slowness and general wonkiness across my entire computer in which I oscillated between   and  , everything sorted itself out. Even my game worked perfectly fine afterwards. I once again got by on sheer luck. So now I sit here, my anti-virus disabled and the necessary exemptions logged (just in case), my Sims 4 file right next to 'Program Files', my 'Game' folder sporting a new '_', the Laundry Day rar open in front of me.... and I am totally unsure how best to proceed. Should I extract the contents of the zip right into the "The Sims 4" folder (which, as a result of my fumblings has been renamed "The Sims 48")? Should I extract it somewhere else and then move it all into the directory? What's the business with this 'Game_' anyway? Should I just cut my loses and be happy my blind fumblings haven't completely ruined my ability to play the game at all? 

All of these excepting the last one (which is more philosophical than technical) I haven't found answers to on the forum and so having pieced all of this together bit by bit, tutorial by tutorial, I come to the conclusion I might as well ask for help and tell someone of my situation specifically instead of screwing up in spectacular fashion. Sorry for the novel, but I figured I'd make this more than just a meek cry for help - 'first impressions' and all that. 

Hello and welcome to the Forum @FuzzyDunlop,

Could you at first try using WinRAR for the extraction of the archive files? Also, it doesn't matter if you extract the DLC directly in to the installation folder "The Sims 4", or at first someplace else, and then copy/paste into the installation folder of TS4.

As long as you always replace all existing files/folders when applying DLC, it should be fine.

Now make sure to delete ALL "Game" or "Game_" folders you may have, since I'm not sure what exactly you have been doing. It's a technicality to prevent endless household loading screens in TS4. After doing so, just re-copy/re-paste the Laundry Day files, over the TS4 installation. Then try the game...

Good luck!

Okay, so whichever Game/Game_ folder I currently have gets deleted before I even do the replace. Gotcha, that kinda wigs me out because I fear it not working and then not being able to go back to before the update, but you seem pretty confidant about it and you definitely know what you're doing. That was one of the things I was unsure about, wasn't sure how much from the read me file and how much from the forum thread were reconciled. Thank you so much for your assistance.

FuzzyDunlop wrote:Okay, so whichever Game/Game_ folder I currently have gets deleted before I even do the replace. Gotcha, that kinda wigs me out because I fear it not working and then not being able to go back to before the update, but you seem pretty confidant about it and you definitely know what you're doing. That was one of the things I was unsure about, wasn't sure how much from the read me file and how much from the forum thread were reconciled. Thank you so much for your assistance.

It's a bit tricky to explain, but at some point in the past (with the Toddlers/Vampires/bowling update), something was changed in the game technically. If you simply copied/pasted the new Game-folder, over the old installation of "City Living", the game would end up with endless household loading screens.

Our standard suggestion since then has been to delete or rename that "Game"-folder. It can be done under step #7 here:
https://games4theworld.forumotion.com/t21806-must-read-how-to-install-the-sims-4-correctly

Or you can delete it at the very end, and then take the "Game"-folder from the latest DLC, which currently is the Laundry Day Stuff.

Your suggestion of WinRAR over 7Zip did it! I tried using 7 again just to test it and received the same issue, basically it had trouble overwriting most of the files. WinRAR however did it with no problem. I'm extremely curious as to why one worked and not the other, but I'm relieved to see that so far everything's worked out. I'm not one to count my chickens before they hatch, so who knows if a problem will present itself as I sink more time into the game, but for right now it's all   

Thank you so much for the help, I don't know if I ever would've thought to try a different program.

EDIT: Also, on an unrelated not, is that image in your signature Baron von Steuben at Valley Forge?

FuzzyDunlop wrote:(...)

EDIT: Also, on an unrelated not, is that image in your signature Baron von Steuben at Valley Forge?

How did you know?

I just finished Paul Lockhart's The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, and will soon be continuing with Friedrich Kapp's older memoir/account The Life of Frederick William von Steuben (available on Google Books for free, I guess due to the expired copyright). I have taken a bit of interest in events of that period, reading this and that, maybe watching some documentaries as well...