Have I completely lost my game? Help, please!!

[Pam]

Hi Fez.

It sounds like nothing but bad news to me.  If you've tried to restore the backup save file and you don't have any other backups made, I don't believe there's anything else to do.  In the future, I suggest saving several copies of the game file, for example Pendragon A, Pendragon B, Pendragon C, etc.  That way, if your file gets corrupted, you have more choices to restore your game.  You may lose some play time, but that's not nearly as bad as losing the entire file.  I'm really sorry you hit this snag.

[xFezIsAFreakx]

Thanks for that tip, Pam. I shall be definitely clicking the 'save as' button and saving multiple files in future. Like I say, at least I wasn't too far in my legacy. 

[Hosfac]

I don't really get what you'e saying? When I click on the saves folder and go inside, I have the files there. The back up one, the original and the legacy. I also had two other ones which were dated from today (even though this problem started yesterday). I didn't put the old save folder inside the new one. Was I meant to?

What I was asking was if you had made sure that you didn't paste the old save folder (not the files inside of it) into the new one:  as in if you opened up the save folder while you were inside the The Sims 3 folder and saw a folder that was titled "saves" instead of the actual save files.  I'm not trying to assume that you don't know what you're doing, but this is a mistake I made the first time I backed up my saves folder prior to a reinstall.

But it sounds like you didn't do that.

[xFezIsAFreakx]

:O The folder WAS titled 'saves'. It was located in the sims 3 folder, and inside it was the .sims3 and .sims3.backup files. Wasn't that the right one? 

[Hosfac]

:O The folder WAS titled 'saves'. It was located in the sims 3 folder, and inside it was the .sims3 and .sims3.backup files. Wasn't that the right one? 

No, that's right.  I confused you it seems so allow me to try to un-confuse you.

What I did the first time I backed up my files before a fresh install was that I copied the folder titled "Saves."  The entire folder, not just the stuff inside it.  After the install I opened up the save folder and pasted the entire folder (not just the stuff inside it) inside that folder, and my saves didn't show up.  So when went back to see what happened, I opened up the Saves folder from the Sims 3 folder, there was another folder inside of it that was titled "Saves" as well.

I wanted to make sure that you didn't do that, and from the sound of it, you didn't.

[xFezIsAFreakx]

No, I didn't. But thanks, anyway. That might help other people who might have done that and who stumble across this thread.