I've been buying and playing The Sims games since the early 2000s. A couple years ago, when I realized that my future computers might not have disc drives (and The Sims 1 and 2 aren't sold digitally), I ripped all these to ISO files so I could continue to play them.
Today, I tried to re-install The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition on my new computer using these ISOs. The installation went great, even accepting the code I still had on my physical box! However, when I went to play it (keeping the virtual disc in the virtual D: drive), it gave me this error:
To my horror, when I tried to insert the physical disc (thankfully I have a Blu-Ray Drive on this computer), it couldn't be read; it seems that it's too scratched over time.
So my physical disc can't be read and the game won't see my ISO rip of that disc. What can I do do get the game to run?
My setup:
- Windows 10 Pro (x64)
- Virtual DVD drive labeled
D: - Physical BD drive labeled
E: - 32GB of DDR4 RAM across 4 sticks
- Xeon E5 v3 — 12 x 3.50 GHz cores (virtualized from 6)
Best Answer
Since I legitimately bought these games, I went to EA technical support and told them everything I told here. They asked for my product key, and I gave it.
They proceeded to place The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection in my Origin account. Upon downloading this, I was easily able to run The Sims 2 and all of its expansion packs, stuff packs, and patches.
There are then two known issues remaining: The resolution is locked at 800x600, and Sim shadows indoors are large black rectangles. The good news is that these are well-known and easily fixed.
tl;dr If you have a legitimate copy of The Sims 2 (expansion packs or not), tell EA and they will give you Ultimate Collection, which runs easily on modern computers.