Sims 2 Apartment Life complications

[hicktowngirl240]

    As of yesterday, I've had the Apartment Life expansion pack and it has... not been a pleasurable thing. The first problem was that my downloaded items wouldn't come up, so I tried to re-download them and they still won't show up in the objects/buy mode. However, they are all listed as being downloaded in the pannel that enables/disables downloads. And its just the objects, because the clothing items and building items are working.
    Then I uninstalled the game after trying different ways to have the downloads show up on the game, but when I uninstalled it... it took off my EA game folder completely from my computer and to get that back I had to uninstall every sims 2 game and then re-install every game. The EA games folder is back once again, but NOW my download folder isn't. I created a new folder because I don't know what else TO do and the items are being listed as downloaded on the screen, but still won't show up in the buy bin thing...
    So, is anyone else having similar problems? I've read through the info book that comes with the game, and I've looked on the EAsimsgame site place... but I'm not finding any answers. Any suggestions?
I have all the expansion packs (minus the stuff packs) except Nightlife, University, and Free Time
Thank you and sorry for the long message
sarah