What happens to my Sims 2 games if I delete my downloads?

To answer your first question: if you delete your downloads everything that was using custom content will look wrong - any sims with custom skins or hair will have default skins and hair. Any objects in your sims' homes will disappear or revert to defaults - so where you might have had some plastic plants, you might suddenly have a cluster of statues, etc. Walls and floors using custom wallpapers and floor coverings will go bare, and any areas of ground that were using custom ground covers will flash blue. If you then save your game with your custom content removed, anything that has reverted will then stay that way.

To answer (sort of!) your second question- yes there are a number of options available to you if you have determined that it is custom content causing the problem, and you definitely do not have to delete everything. But how do you know it's custom content? The best advice I can give you is to read this sims2wiki guide which tells you everything to know about installing a new expansion- http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help...

If you follow all the tips in the article and it hasn't solved your problem then see here: http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help...

And finally knowing which downloads to avoid is trial and error. Michelle recommended some really good sites...however there is one that she mentioned that I would personally never download from because her hair always crashes my computer due to its extremely high poly count. But other people may have no problems at all. I also download heaps of stuff from modthesims2 but occasionally something will freeze my game as well and no one else has ever reported problems...chances are it was just something that caused a conflict with another download. I usually put downloads into my game one at a time, so then if my game crashes I know immediately what caused the problem and I can remove it and the game runs fine again. And in 4+ years I have never downloaded anything that contained a virus or damaged my computer or my game beyond salvation.

Edit: heheh yes it's Peggy's hair that my comp can't handle.

Sims 3 Apartment Downloads

Nothing will happen to the characters, except there clothes will be changed to something you haven't deleted or the preset clothes that came with the game. It's OK to delete downloads, that actually helps the game run faster.

Try to avoid files from unknown, noname, and suspicious looking websites. Trust the ones that look like they are well established and organized (or one that has a large community of people. This way youll know that a lot of people find the downloads satisfying).

Try raonjena, liana sims 2, peggy zone, thesimsresource, and mts2

Follow Wollybutts' advice. I only wanted to add that you can actually open your game files and then just drag your downloads folder onto your desktop instead of deleting it. If you have a lot of items that you would find in the Create A Family screen, such as hair, clothing, skins then you may also want to drag your Saved Sims folder onto your desktop as well -- especially if you got many of those items by downloading a sim to get them. When you download a sim and then double-click on them to install them, the custom content items such as skin, clothing and hair are put into the Saved Sims folder.

Wolly -- the hair site you had problems with is Peggyzone, isn't it? I've had problems with lots of different hair styles from that site.

ALSO -- downloaded houses will not be removed by dragging the downloads folder out or by deleting it. But it won't matter as the houses rarely ever cause any problems. It's the cc that came with the house that causes problems and that gets put into the downloads folder when you install the house.

Otherwise, if you've done all that and you're still having problems, could you try to explain what those problems are?

ETA: Okay, I'm going to go to EA's bbs site to see if I can find any other posts talking about this problem. I wanted to ask though, is this an apartment complex that was already in the Special Lots & Houses bin? Or is this an apartment complex that you have built yourself? (I mean for the mailbox problem -- I'll see what I can find about the faces problem later.)

Okay, since I really don't know exactly what's happening in your game, I went to EA's sims 2 bbs and in the search box typed in mailbox then told it to look under the Apartment Life forum just to see if I could find anything. I'm gong to paste links to any I find that might fit. Here's the first one:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages....

That's about the only one I could find specifically talking about the mailbox. There is another one about building apartments yourself:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages....

I haven't been able to find anything about lack of faces in CAS (I know, it should be CAF for Create a Family -- but on the EA bbs site, they call it CAS for create a sim). I'm going to just paste the link to the forum where people are talking about Apartment Life. What they like, what they don't like, what's messing up in their game, etc. That way you can read some of the posts yourself.

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/start.php...

I have every ep up to and including Seasons and every sp up to and including Celebrations. I don't have any of the newer ones, so it's hard to help. Good luck and I wish you well.