I have asked this everywhere and got nothing. I see folk here I recognize from years ago who knew their stuff. Maybe one of you can help me.

FIRST issue then. (Before I get to the mods!)

I've only just come back to the game after years away, and I've been trying to troubleshoot this for a couple of weeks now.

Launcher opens normally.
Downloads show the new stuff (from The Store, nothing else)
I try to install it.
Installer says success OR already installed.
Installed folder shows new items.
Downloads show these items greyed out.
Everything looks great.
Go to game ITEMS NOT THERE

And repeat.
And repeat.

Re-boot computer.

And repeat.

I've tried re-downloading. Nope. I've tried Run As Administrator. Nope. I've tried removing all other downloads. Nope. I've tried one at a time, I've tried everything.

I have screenshots if they of any use.

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH

If you are patient and/or wish to contact me directly, I need a true guru because after that I have more issues regarding modding.

Try pulling out or renaming your entire TS3 user game folder from Documents. The game will spawn a new one on its next attempted startup. It will have no added content, installed worlds, library files, or saves, but those will all be safe back in the pulled out folder. Can you Launcher install your content properly on the new game folder and does it show up in a newly started test game?

Not sure which folder you mean, the one actually marked Sims 3 or one therein?

(Looking through these has raised another qestion, BTW but I'll save that for later)

Your user game folder is the one within Documents\Electronic Arts that is actually called The Sims 3. Pull it out or rename it to The Sims 3.old or something like that. User game folders are swappable, you can always put it back into place if needed. What we are trying to do is see if the fault is with the current game folder itself.

I like the way you think. YES! This worked. Many thanks.

I would be content to lose everything else from the saved original, except of course, my Sims. It took me so long to get them to the skill levels they have. Is there a way of extracting them?

Okay good, this is progress but we're not finished yet.

I would advise keeping the new game folder. Add/copy whatever other content you needed to it from the old game folder like package based CC, mods, savedsims, your library files (these are your binned households and community lots), and reinstall any custom or store worlds. When it has enough content for your prior ongoing games to be playable again, assuming this is where you wanted to end up, copy your saves into the new folder and play forward from there. You can extract your sims from those saves if you really want to, but if the saves were playable before they should still be playable now on the new game folder.

Right, I'll give this a shot later, and thank you. If I don't report back here all went as planned. But I do have other issues, so I'll put them in a separate thread as they are not related to this at all.

Right, and in fact I'll move this thread to the general Chatterbox board since it turned out to not really be about mod installation.

Yes, thanks.

So, here's the upshot of all that.

Having got the hang of moving things around, I tried several tests. Your method fixed the download/installation issue. I shall remember what I've learned for any other issues I have.

But I was not able to put my Saved Sims into the new user game folder. After several attempts at shuffling files around, I still couldn't get them to show up. I then put the original game user file back in as was, then removing everything else except them. Soon as I tried to add one download the installation failed again. Something about those Sims is doing it. So, I swallowed hard and deleted them.

I have essentially started from scratch, and it was a bit heartbreaking, like losing an old friend, but we live and learn.

Bear with me a moment here as I try to understand this. SavedSims are merely CAS templates to be used for creating new sims within CAS. When we create a new sim or bring an existing one into CAS, we can skip over the CAS part selections, slider settings, traits, etc. and call upon one of these to be superimposed onto the sim being worked upon. That's where we see them arranged by age stage, gender, species, etc. to select from.

These are not sims that are actually progressed with play history and who are active in our games nor those saved to the household bin as seen in Edit Town. Are we talking about the same thing or tripping up over semantics? I mean, is it only the CAS templates for these sims that are now missing in your new game folder or some other element? Sims who are actually in play are part of the saved games. Sims who are part of households that have been saved down to the household bin as seen in Edit Town are (cryptically named) Library folder files. Neither one requires there to be a SavedSim CAS template for them to survive.

The function that gets CAS to read the templates from SavedSims can be fussy, and we do know if a game folder is missing any content they are wearing/carrying then they may refuse to show up there, but I doubt it was their presence (alone) that was breaking the older game folder. Sometimes game folders just "go bad."