(P.S. Sorry for posting the 2nd time today on the same forum :P)

So, just earlier I made a family in Riverblossom Hills. I started playing, but noticed that I had some custom content I wanted to disable, so I clicked the "Exit Game" button and saved. I removed the custom content from the Downloads folder and booted up the game again, but to my surprise I couldn't find the family anywhere. I went to edit the lot and all of the items I had put down were still there, but the family was not.

I even opened up Riverblossom Hills in SimPE to check, and couldn't find any of my family members there. Could this be game corruption? (I hope not Otherwise I will have to uninstall the game via Origin (since I installed the Ultimate Collection) and then redownload it (which takes like 6 hours with my connection speed))

Go to Docs/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighbourhoods/G001/Characters, and look at the last few character files. What are their creation dates? There should be one for each sim you made with a creation date (not a modified date!) of today.

Interesting, all there is is Sims from places like the Downtown, vacation destinations and universities (since I loaded them in before making the family today), but no character files exist for the Sims I created today.

Always save and then click exit, saving while exiting is not a safe method of saving.

When you go into Origin and right click, does it have the option to heal your game?

Wow, I did not know this. Good to know, from now on I'll save first.



Unless it's hidden, no.

Is it possible those sims could be in the family bin? I'm far from being technically knowledgeable on game mechanics, but curious if family stays on lot if it's not saved.

Well, the game was saved, but the family disappeared. I can go into the lot and all of the furniture that I placed down still exists, plus, the house costed 13,000 simoleons before, now it costs 16,000 because of the furniture that wasn't there before.

I guess I can't do anything to get the family back

When you have Origin running you can right click on the UC icon and there is a option to repair your game. There is also option to update your game and there are over 10 updates and each one has to be done and you need to keep on trying the update until it tells you UC is up to date.

Did you move the sims in and then you place all the items?

Ah, I didn't right click. Anyway, I repaired it and tried updating, but it told me it's already up to date.



Yes.

You are one of the unlucky ones that this has happen to and you will need to start saving either but clicking the save button or exiting to the hood view and save that way before you exit the game.

If you are on Windows 7 or 8 you may also be unlucky that your OS has made it where your My Doc Sims 2 folder is set to read only and you may need to set it to read and write before changes will be saved.

I checked the folder, and looks like it was set to read-only, but only partially. I unset the partial read-only just in case. Thanks anyway, I didn't really think I could save the family I can make a new one, I didn't even really play too long with them.

Alright, so I'm having a similar issue again.

What happens is: any CAS-made or in-game born sims will disappear and be replaced in all memories as $Subject. This happened to my megahood first, after Brandi Broke's and Bella Goth's babies disappeared and were replaced as $Subject, at the time I thought that I had somehow managed to corrupt my megahood and deleted it, starting a new one, using meetme2theriver's clean templates. Everything was fine during gameplay, even after exiting to the neighbourhood and loading the family again, everything was fine. Then, I exited the game (not from the lot, from the neighbourhood) and came back, and my custom CAS made sim and all of the children that had born in the megahood had disappeared, their family members' memories had been replaced with $Subject.

I have absolutely no clue what could be causing this, I'm guessing the game is having trouble writing the proper files, but my folders are not set to read-only.

Do you have an antivirus program running at the same time as your game? After getting my new (now old) computer set up on Windows 7 I started having babies disappear to be replaced by a blue enpty thumbnail and the parents had $subject memories. On aging saving and loading a lot again toddlers looked like stretched babies and children like floating toddlers. I also had heaps of temp files created. I've found two other people with this issue. The solution if it is this, is turn off your antivirus every time you play or change to a different anti virus.

This is a long shot, but what antivirus do you have? Some antivirus programs are known to eat babies, and I'm wondering if it might view newly-created-in-CAS sims as babies too. @joandsarah77 had that issue and might be able to tell you which antivirus program it was that caused the problem.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Jo herself!

I have Avast, I could try.

Lol, that's funny esme.

Disabled Avast, loaded an unplayed neighbourhood, created a random CAS sim, moved in another sim from the neighbourhood, saved and exited to the neighbourhood, exited the game, loaded up the neighbourhood again, loaded up the family and CAS sim has disappeared

Doesn't look like it's an issue with the antivirus.

It still sounds like you have read only and not read and write for this will happen in both windows 7 (after an update 2-4 months ago] and windows 8.

You may also need to turn off User Account Control for it will reset to read only both programs and My Doc folders for Sims 2 to read only again after restarting computer.

Disconnect from the internet and turn off Avast for each step below.
1.Turn off UAC and restart computer.
2. Check if UAC is still off and if it is then make the Programs folder EA folder for The Sims 2 to read and write and make sure you select all folder and files then restart computer.
3 Make your My Doc folder for The Sims 2 to both read and write and make sure you select all folder and files and then restart your game.

Now go and test if you dont lose any more CAS sims. If every thing is running as it should then turn on UAC and restart your computer.

Well it was worth a shot TuxxedoCat. I'm also guessing you have tried healing your game?

Just tried and it didn't work.



Yes. Also you can feel free to call me just Tux :P

I also just did a quick google search and found the "attrib" command, and ran "attrib -r -s" on my EA Games folder in my Documents. Then ran just "attrib" to check what flags it has and none of the folders seem to have any flags, which should mean they are both readable and writable. I will test out if this worked in a second.

EDIT: Nope, didn't work. CAS made sims still disappear and show up as $Subject in other sims' memories. *sigh* It did succeed in making my game's loading screens lightning fast though

Well then you may have something wrong with your computer for every one else that have had problems like this have had them fixed by turning off UAC and making sure the folders are read and write.

I don't have any links for you but there are programs that you can get for free to test your computer components and see if any of them are not working as they should.

ADD: You may want to try this free scan and see whats up. http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/default.asp

I'm not entirely sure this has to do with reading and writing at all, as lots and everything else gets written perfectly. Pre-made Sims or newly created lots work totally fine.

Oh well, if I can't seem to solve it, I might as well uninstall the Ultimate Collection and try installing my regular collection - it may have less content, and it may still pose this problem...but I guess it's worth a try.

Alright, I uninstalled the Ultimate Collection and (so far) installed the regular base game. Tested and...it works!

I'm not sure what was causing it, but I'm not even going to care, as long as I can play. Thanks for the help, everyone, still.

To add to the list of potential causes for this problem for future reference, I've recently started syncing my game with Mega and found that I get disappearing babies if Mega is running while I play.