luthienrising, to answer your question: No, I am not using an external hard drive. All my files have stayed on my internal drive in the regular Mods folder or my Downloads folder. To keep my testing clean, I have my original folder renamed as 'The Sims 4 - M.' Every time I run a test, I let the game create a brand-new 'The Sims 4' folder, and then I rename it afterward so I don't lose my results. That is why I have several folders in my directory.
My 'Sims 4 - T1' is just a copy of my original files. 'Sims 4 - T2' was where I tested an 'Adult Bottoms' subfolder with 51 items. 'Sims 4 - T3' was a subfolder named 'Bottoms' where I used ONLY a freshly downloaded version of Drake’s pants, which worked.
Yesterday, for 'Sims 4 - T4,' I started with a completely fresh game folder and created a new subfolder in the Mods folder named March2026Test (no spaces or underscores). I copied the old file for Drake's pants from my -M folder and pasted it in there with 24 other random files. Then for 'Sims 4 - T5,' I created another fresh folder and put another random 25 loose files including Drake's pants directly in the Mods folder—again, I just copied and pasted the old file for the pants from my -M folder. I also have a 'Sims 4 - V' folder for my vanilla game with only core mods like MCCC and UI Cheats.
In both of those tests yesterday, the old version of the pants stayed invisible. The only success I’ve had was in my T3 test where I used the freshly downloaded version of those same pants and Willow's pants. This confirms that even in a 100% brand-new game folder, the update is ignoring my existing files but recognizing new downloads instantly.
JenjenlnFoley It really does sound like something on your particular system or workflow caused a file issue at some point. I don't see a solution other than redownloading. This isn't something we're getting widespread reports of.
