When your computer crashes, it can leave any open files in an indeterminate state. This means that all of your neighborhoods could have been corrupted by the crash. I would recommend that you try restoring from your most recent backup. backup your existing neighborhoods first, just in case. If your previous backups don't work, then you have a different problem than what I've suggested.

The strange thing is, is when I load Sims 2 Desiderata Valley [my most used neighborhood] does not appear in the selection of neighborhoods. Like you said my neighborhoods may have been corrupted, yet what's strange is that all of the files are still in the folders, as if nothing happened.

The game was just working perfectly fine; as said before; but right after I turned it off "POOF!" Desiderata Valley disappeared.Could this just mean that I need to re-install Freetime to get the neighborhood back?

--Also, I have a folder where my backup of the game is from two months ago on my computer. I would just like to know if I can CUT the Desiderata Valley Folder from my backup folder and PASTE that folder into where my "corrupted" Desiderata Valley Folder is, to restore my game from two months ago.

Would Desiderata Valley show up again if I did that, or do I need to re-install Freetime in order to get it back and then PASTE the backup folder back into the Desiderata Valley Folder?

Thanks again for your help,
Desiree

You can't tell whether a neighborhood is corrupted by looking at the number and names of the files. Corruption occurs inside of the files.

There's no need to reinstall. If you want to restore Desiderata Valley from the original shipped neighborhood, you can just copy that one hood.
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...t_Neighborhoods

To restore from your backup, first move (cut and paste) your existing Desiderata Valley folder somewhere safe, such as onto your desktop. Just make sure not to copy it over your existing backup.

Then, copy your backup Desiderata Valley folder into your save game Neighborhoods folder. You'll want to copy rather than cut, so that you don't destroy your backup.

The most important thing is that you don't overwrite your current version with the backup version, which is why you want to move the current version somewhere else first.

Thank you so much for everything! I just checked my game and guess what Desiderata Valley is back in play! I really don't know how I should thank you, but I appreciate your help very much! I am eternally grateful!

The problem seemed to be contained in my most recent neighborhood folder, and like you said it was probably corrupt. The only issue that I have now is rebuilding a few community lots and recreating a few characters. Unless, is it possible to restore characters by pasting the Character Folder into the backup Neighborhood Folder? Regardless, since I'm sensible I don't have a problem with remaking everything I was just curious. [Although my sister will probably be mad. Haha!]

With everything thanks again, I couldn't have done it without you!

Thank you,
Desiree

No, you cannot restore characters by copying files. Your characters are most likely lost.

However, it is possible to restore lots by copying files. If you can find the exact lot package that you want, then copy it to your LotCatalog folder and rename it to match the naming conventions in that folder. The (unoccupied) lot should appear in your Lots Bin. When you place it into your neighborhood, edit the lot, make a build change, and save before moving a family in. This should help to clean the lot.

This happened to me last night. Lost all neighbohoods and custom content. Any way to get it back without a backup?

We'll need more information than that to help you. Are all of your files still there? If not, what happened to them? What happened immediately before they disappeared? Have you looked in your recycle bin?

No, they disappeared totally from the downloads/neighborhoods folders. I had just installed Nightlife but couldn't go to any of the houses. I uninstalled it then and everything is gone.

When you uninstall your game, EA deletes everything. They usually warn you that they intend to delete everything.

Unless your stuff is backed up, or in your recycle bin, it's gone.

Last edited by Mootilda : 5th May 2012 at 02:26 AM.

I just want to give a word of hope to all those whose neighborhoods have gone missing:

If your computer creates restore points, and you still have the missing neighborhood's folder in your EA Games/...The Sims 2/...Neighborhoods folder, you can right-click the missing neighborhood folder, properties, and Previous Versions tab. From there, if you haven't deleted your restore points, you can select a previous version of the missing neighborhodd from before the suspected corruption happened. You might lose a week or so's worth of happenings in your hood, but it's better than having to start all over from scratch.

Hi everyone! I hope u can help me out


Operating system: XP Home Edition 2002 Service Pack 3

Computer specs: Intel(R) Atom(TM) 1.60 GHz, 1 GB RAM (HP mini netbook 110 LA)

Games: The Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Pets, Open for Business and Seasons. I am not sure but I think I have only the last patch, the one for seasons.


Details of Neighbourhood loss: After installing every single expansion I decides to play with VeronaVille (I never played with this hood), and when I clicked on it, the game started to show "pets", "weather" etc... (creating the hood with my expansion), but once I got into VeronaVille all of the families were gone. That´s my problem, all of the lots are empty.
I dind´t remove my downloads and I do udo the sim blender sometimes, but I don´t use time sync or money hacks.

Neighbourhood File details If you go to Documents/ EA Games/ The Sims2/ Neighbourhoods are the neighbourhood files still there?: Yes, they all are. When I look inside N003 (VeronaVille) everything is in there (Characters, Lots, StoryTelling and Thumbnails Folders), that´s the weird thing!

Sim PE Investigation: I don´t have SimPE What changed on your system immediately before the corruption: Nothing! Just tried to play with the hood that I ever touched!

Please give brief details of any system or game changes you made just before you noticed the missing neighbourhoods: I did download some objects (manually unzipped, but I do have CleanInstaller). I never played with VeronaVille so I don´t have any idea if the families were there and I corrupt them with downloads, or they were never there from the beggining.


Any other relevant information: I tried removing the "Downloads" Folder and restart the game, I tried replacing all of the Neighborhoods from the "original folder in C, replacing "NeighborhoodManager.package", etc.

I don't want to reinstall everything because of the missing families, so PLEASE if anyone can help me out with this, I will really appreciate it!

Luckily, you never played the neighborhood, so it doesn't really matter to you. Just reset your Veronaville and try again.
http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...t_Neighborhoods

Not only do I have a disappearing neighborhood(more like never loaded in the first place),but the majority of items that come from OFB do not exist or are messed up looking if they do.

I have a brand new store brought computer that I haven't had for a month yet. Uploaded the Sims up to Seasons only last week.

Specs-

OP-Windows 7 Home Premium Service pack 1 64 bit
Computer manufacturer- Lenovo
Processor-Intel R Core i5-2320 CPU 3.00GHZ(4CPU's)
Ram 8192MB Ram(2010 used)-14068 MB available
Graphics Card:Intel(R)HD Graphics Family
DAC-Internal
Approx Total Memory 1760MB

Expansions Uploaded-Base Game,Uni, Nightlife,OFB,Pets,Seasons. No stuff packs. No patches.


Problem-Everything was smooth sailing until I installed OFB. First it would not install the regular way no matter what I did. I cleaned it about 7 times. Still Nothing. It has scratches on it sure,but Seasons has wayyy more and it uploaded perfectly. No matter how many times I tried to install OFB it would stop at 3% with this error message:

A problem occurred when trying to transfer the file TSData/Res/Sound/Voice3.package from the media. Cancel or Retry.

So after some searching I found how to manuel install from this site. Everything was going good until a error message came up that said that one file could not be copied do you want to skip.? So I skipped. I did not launch though. I then loaded Pets and Seasons and then began to play.

First thing I noticed was the neighborhood for OFB(Bluewater Village) is nowhere to be found. Instead the game told me to build a custom district. This was the only option available. The only neighborhoods listed are Riverblossom,Pleasantview,Strangetown, Veronaville and of course a nightlife district if that counts as a neighborhood.

Next problem I noticed was when I actually started to play. All items in the buy menu that come from the open for business pack say no pic and are invisible if I click the no pic and try to place it in my house. The food from OFB is the same way. The descriptions for these items are there though.

Some items that do show up, like some trees and the the devices that you can make things like the toy maker etc, are visible and can be placed in my house or lot,but they have no color to them. Just words scribbled all over them. Like it's incomplete.



There are a few things from the OFB pack that do show up though. Color and all.
-Talent Badges
-Regular Cash register
-Turn-ons/Offs
-Shopping Cart icon to hold items until you pay
-The ability to make many items like food at a time
-Sims personal inventory
-The ability to make a home business. Haven't seen if it will work yet since the majority of things for OFB don't.


Don't know if these have to do with the problems of OFB or just because I haven't patched,but I'll list them anyway.

-Sometimes pets get stuck. This happened to my dog while washing him in the tub. I couldn't move him. So the social worker came and took him away.

-The Sims shake sometimes. I've only seen it done in cutscenes like marriage or woohooing in the hot tub.

-Once on the load screen I wanted to skip the intro so I clicked on it and it froze. I waited a few moments, and then went to task manger and reloaded.

-When entering my house part of the screen stays black for a few seconds before everything loads into view.

Also if patching is something that will have to be done do any of them, up to Seasons, come with Securom on them? I really don't want to go though having that infected back on my computer.


Overall how can I fix OFB. If it even can be fixed? Thanks

This is not a disappearing neighborhoods problem. You should really re-post your problem in the main Sims 2 Help forum.

Sounds like you need a new OFB disk, unless you can repair the one that you have.

Some of your other problems may be because you don't have a graphics card. Your computer isn't really up to playing the game, especially the later EPs. Here's a FAQ which explains the problem and suggests ways that you can reduce the damage that you are doing to your computer every time that you play:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...nboard_Graphics

I dOperating system (Win 98/ Win XP Home/ Win XP Pro/ Mac OS10.4 etc- I am particularly interested in whether it is Pro or Home for XP users)

I have Window XP Home.
I have no idea what a computer spec is
Sims 2; Double Deluxe. Night Life. H&M
My strangetown was acting all weird and all of the houses that were located in strangetown were houses i didn't recognize and were scattered randomly (intersecting roads, etc). So i deleted strangetown. and then when i came started my sims 2 today- pleasantview (my favorite town) was gone and in it's place was strangetown !

Because this happened, my sims 2 crashed and i had to re-install my sims 2..but for some reason my H&M did not need re-installation. Also, i recently made changes to my "Globalprops.xml" file accordingly to what the instructions were to make the cheat "allmenus on" available to me.

N002 (strangetown) is not located in my files.
N001 (pleasantview) is located in my files, as well as all the pictures i took in that neighborhood.

Also, the neighborhood file that is supposed to be located under "Program File" is not there.

In that case, you'd need to reinstall your game.

You should be able to get back the neighborhoods from DVD, rather than having to reinstall everything.

However, your original problem sounds like the game was really confused. Deleting N002 shouldn't affect N001 at all. Can you explain exactly what you did to Globalprops.xml? Was Pleasantview OK after those changes?

operating system: microsoft windows 7 home premium
computer specs.: amd athlon x2 dual core processor 3250e, 1500 Mhz
games installed: all expansion packs/h&m stuff pack, mansion & garden stuff pack, celebration! stuff pack & family fun stuff pack
details of neighborhood loss: the only neighborhood i'm currently missing is the one i play the most, which is desiderata valley
neighborhood file details: all of my neighborhood files are currently there, including desiderata valley files which won't show up in my game
sim PE investigation: i don't have sim PE installed on my computer
what changed/happened before corruption: right before desiderata valley seemed to disappear, my computer apparently got overheated & shut down unexpectedly, while in the middle of loading desiderata valley. i then waited a couple of hours to restart the game & once it was completely loaded desiderata wasn't there like it had been before the shut down
other info.: i downloaded a bunch of custom content last night (the disappearance of the neighborhood happened today) but i don't think any of the downloads affected desiderata valley showing up. i am almost positive it was due to the unexpected shut down of my computer, i'm just wondering if there's a way to recover all of my sims & lots since i didn't have a backup of desiderata valley before it happened

i have already tried cutting & pasting the neighborhoodmanager.package file twice, it didn't seem to help at all. i also tried removing my downloads folder thinking that it might help, but that didn't seem to do anything either.

thanks & hopefully someone can help me~

Last edited by onthesea : 14th Jul 2012 at 01:11 AM.

The most likely explanation is that the crash permanently corrupted your neighborhood.

You should be able to get back your lots by moving everything from your neighborhood's Lots folder to your LotCatalog folder, then renaming all of the packages to match the naming conventions in that folder.

To restore your sims, you'll need to install SimPE and see whether you can extract their appearances. However, if your neighborhood package is badly corrupted, this may not work.

You should probably do the Game_Help:Game_Problem^wiki FAQ to ensure that the new CC is not crashing your game.

You might also want to post your system specs in the Hardware Forum, to see whether your computer is up to playing the game.

well thanks for the help.
do you have any idea why an unexpected shut down corrupts files ?
its happened before but it's never actually made one of my neighborhoods completely disappear

also, what do you mean by extracting appearances ? i've used sim PE before but i've never tried this before. if this works will the whole sim be extracted, like their memories & relationships, or will everything be wiped out ?

i ended up installing sim PE & located what i think to be desiderata valley but its titled 'unknown.' do you have any idea why ?

Last edited by onthesea : 14th Jul 2012 at 03:57 AM.

Why would they do that anyway? Just to be an ass? I can see that the way they run that company seems like they hate people who play games.

Huh? What else would you expect uninstalling to do. *headscratch*

I'm sure that the "I hate EA and EA hates us" thread is somewhere in the Discussion forum.