Recently I tried loading the only neighborhood I had, Sunset Valley, and everytime I click on it the loading bar loads all the way up to full very quickly, then I get a message that says "A serious error has occured while loading 'SunsetValley.sims3'. It is strongly recommended that you restart the application.' I click the checkmark, and it goes back to the choose a neighborhood to play menu. After restarting my sims3 game and still not being able to play it, I made another neighborhood called 'SunsetValley2' and now when I try to click on it, it does the exact same thing as the first. Finally, I made a 3rd Sunset Valley and that one works. I can move in families and play lots and save games on it and it works just fine. The other two neighborhoods, SunsetValley and SunsetValley2 in the neighborhood menu have blank outlines of a house and of my active family when I click on them, but SunsetValley3 shows my active household and a picture of SunsetValley.

I'm not completely sure what caused this, but the last time I was playing my original Sunset Valley neighborhood my computer crashed right in the middle of playing. I don't think it was due to the Sims3 because I've been having this same problem for a while now, can't seem to get it fixed. My computer just randomly crashes and goes to a blue screen with an error message.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there is any way I could recover my original neighborhood, I had alot of houses on there that I didn't save or upload to my account and I'd really like to get them back Any input is greatly appreciated.

I had this error, too, a few times, and it seems to be pretty random. Sometimes it appeared after deleting the cache files, sometimes it is fixed by just rebooting the pc.

I would suggest, if rebooting and clearing caches doesn't help, to load a previous savegame. TS3 automatically generates one with a .backup extension that you should be able to rename, if you don't already have one.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean jonha? I think this happened to me after I quite the Sims3 and then my comptuer crashed (not due to the sims3). I haven't touched any of the cahe files. I have rebooted my pc many times and started up the game many times and the same two neighborhoods are still inaccessable. I'm not sure how to load a previously saved game if I can't access the original Sunset Valley neighborhood.

And I'm really sorry if this post is in the wrong section, I don't get on the forums much here and I wasn't sure where to post this, to be honest it's a little difficult to navigate around the site.

It seems we're dealing with 2 issues here:

1. sims save files
you can restore a save from sometime back if that has not been overwritten: Game_Help:Restoring_Backup_Saves^wiki, if you have .backup folders. If you have .bad folders in your TS3 Saves folder, sometimes subsequent saves are corrupted. Also make sure the contents of Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\CurrentGame.sims3\ is empty. And you need to Game_Help:Sims_3_Delete_Cache_Files^wiki periodically as these caches can get corrupted after long gameplay or when some glitch happen. The saves might also not be processed properly if your HDD is failing (might be related to your crashing issue) or getting full. Have you run a chkdsk and defrag on this HDD recently? By the way, what games do you have and at what patch versions?

2. the system crash
if you want help with that, post in the Computer Help forum (see menu at top under Help) a description of what you were doing when it crashed, what error message do you get, any BSOD error code with your Game_Help:System_Specs^wiki. Any other info is also helpful, like when did it start happening? was it recently or have been recurring a lot? or after an update (drivers or Windows OS)?