I was experiencing a problem with installing Sims 2: Nightlife. Sims 2 and University both installed properly and ran well. For some reason, while installing nightlife, i would insert disc 2/2 and at 99% through the installation process it would stop and have an error in retrieving "tsdata/control/control1.dat"
That day i had also bought Open For Business, so i installed it and gave up on Nightlife for the night. I woke up tried what LuborK said by washing off the disc with warm soapy water, even though the disc looked clean. I then tried installing it again and it completed the installation this time.
I'm not sure if it worked because i had installed Open For Business, or because i washed off the cd.
Anyway, trying to install Nightlife 10 times in one night was very frustrating, but it installed without error in the morning thankfully.