I can't switch Active Household! I think I lost my family! HELP!

[javonne87]

Hi Everyone,

I've been looking EVERYWHERE for a solution to this problem and I've found nothing. I've always loved The Sims. I used to play it at a family members house all the time, but I never owned my own game. But I just recently started playing it again last month since I found out my husband had The Sims 3 on his laptop...so people, I really know nothing about patches, cache's and all that other stuff. But anyway...

Basically, I have three children (in The Sims world), who are now adults with their own families and so I like to switch Active Household to play the three families. So, yesterday, as usual, I go to 'Edit Town', 'Change Active Household', I select family...it begins to process for about 2 seconds...then nothing! All I see is a map of the town. I can scroll around, but I can't click on anything nor can I return to the menu. I have to quit the entire game and in order to do that, I have to use ctrl+alt+delete.

First, I tried going to a siblings home and inviting the family I'm having difficulties with over so I can ask them to 'Move In' and then have them move out, but that didn't work. It started processing and the little circle just kept twirling and twirling. So, I had to quit the game again. Finally, I went to back to 'Edit Town' and tried to reset the family by doing 'testingcheatsenabled true' and then 'resetsim Firstname Lastname' and see if something would happen, but that didn't work either.

Is the family just really lost??? I don't know what to do.

[Figwit]

Sorry.  It sounds like you have run into one of the many bugs that plagues this game.  It helps to have more than one save going at the one time - I have four - so you can always go back to an earlier save.  If you aren't using any mods and haven't patched it is possible that EA story progression moved your sims out of town.  Once they are gone, they are gone.   

[javonne87]

Well I actually I had downloaded a patch of some sort. I can't remember which one it was though. And what do you mean by "...have more than one save going at the one time..."? Do you mean just keep going to the little "..." and hit 'Save'?

[Seabody]

And what do you mean by "...have more than one save going at the one time..."? Do you mean just keep going to the little "..." and hit 'Save'?

Hi, welcome to the forum.

By "...have more than one save going at the one time...", Figwit means have four saves, which are named "game1", "game2", "game3", "game4", for instance. For simplicity - you can use twallan's Saver Mod, but this is not required - you can use "Save As" and rotate the names (when you save "game4", use "game1" again).

Did you use "resetsim Firstname Lastname" exactly? Try a hard reset - "resetsim *" to reset all Sims (the game will pause). And remember - no quotations!

Finally, do you remember the site you got the patch from? Was it www.thesims3.com ? If it isn't, don't download the patch. No offence to any websites, I'm sure many have the patch safely, but some can tamper with it and possibly install a virus on your PC.

[javonne87]

Oooh okay, thanks! Yeah, I did "resetsim Seline Boyer" and then "resetsim Marcus Boyer" (without the quotations) separately for each person within the household that I'm having problems with. Now, what does 'resetsim' DO exactly??? I don't wanna erase everything all my sims have ever done :-/

And as far as the patch goes, I did it through the Sims Launcher when I checked for updates. It mighta been a bad decision to make...

[Seabody]

Okay, you downloaded it from the Launcher. That's safe, it's done through Origin, which is a division of EA.

resetsim returns the Sim to a neutral state in their home lot.
In a nutshell - the Sim is sent home, with motives typically reset, and moodlets sometimes lost. That's it. There's no real loss caused.

[javonne87]

Okay, I'll try that.

[Seabody]

If that doesn't work, try this.

[javonne87]

Yeah, I just tried everything and it hasn't worked :-/ ...idk, maybe I have to wait for a new update or something.

[warr2098]

That happened to me in some towns occasionally, for me I had to evict the family and move them back in again.

[javonne87]

I found the solution!!! I copied the the family and moved them into a new house and now I'm able to play them! My goodness! Lol....thanks for all of you guys help...it was GREATLY appreciated!