...it removed every download I'd ever installed (luckily I keep backups of everything), luckily I'd also just backed-up my neighborhood. However, it also ate every photo and movie I ever took in the game...again, luckily a good portion of them had been saved...except of course for the wedding I just finished playing this afternoon! Argh!
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The problem: I installed the game seemingly without any problems. Then, I started the game up...again, seemingly no problem. It started up with the usual scroll: "graduating splines", etc. Then, I got to the neighborhood screen (after choosing, of course, "Strangetown"), and a pop-up came up at that screen announcing that I could choose a University for this town (similar to the pop-ups in the first game in any of the post-Hot Date expansions that new things were happening in town, etc.).
You then go to a sub-menu similar to the creation of a neighborhood screen where you get to choose one of three pre-built colleges and the choice to also build one from scratch (using the neighborhood templates that we already have). I chose the desert college, 'cause it would match the Strangetown atmosphere.
Then, you have a screen similar to the normal neighborhood screen...with a brief introduction to your college. This particular college has a band, a frat, a sorority and a house owned by a wealthy family (possibly the dean's son...didn't get to play them yet, obviously).
Anyway, you can choose to play the pre-built students or move students (teens) in from your neighborhood. (there are also some homeless kids in the "Sims bin"). I chose to move in four students from my neighborhood.
Then I sat there...and sat there...and sat there. Finally, the house opened (after the terminally long splash screen for the house (similar to that of a family)). And I explored the house a little bit with the game on pause and looked through the buy and build catalog(s) to see what cool stuff was added. When I un-paused the game, even though I still had a cursor and could spin the house and put the walls up, etc., the people were ALL frozen! Yikes!
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So, I uninstalled in the hopes of being able to just start freshly. What a mistake. Hopefully, I'll be able to play soon (I'll try one of the pre-built sets of students for the short term while I install all of the furniture and clothing that I've downloaded over time).
(I'll of course first re-install the backed-up version of Strangetown)...oh well, at least there's always Margaret Cho on my TiVo to keep me company.