it wont let me use any of the build tools? can anyone hazzard a guess why and how i could fix it?

Try replacing your cracked EXE with the real one and using the CD as you should be. The 'No CD/DVD' cracks currently available are flawed. They manage to get around the Safedisk 3 copy protection, but the Sims2 programmers have made the game cripple itself when it detects that a file (particularly the EXE file) have been modified. No 'crack writer' as found a way around it yet. The Build mode and save mode (partially) are disabled upon using a 'No CD crack' The only thing to do is buy it, do without the build mode or wait an eternity for them to get around the problem. AMD Athlon XP2200+ Aero7 lite 512mb Crucial pc2700 Abit NF7-s V2.0 80GB Seagate SATA 120GB Seagate SATA Geforce4 Ti4200 128mb Benq FP767-12 17" 12ms SB live 5.1 Digital