Sims 2 Neighborhoods Disappear

[ami-mercury]

Hello,
We played Sims 2 (all ep & sp's installed) and it was fine. No hacks or user created stuff at all, just a small number of Maxis-created items. Not using any cheats (boolprop or whatever) Made a backup and haven't played Sims 2 for a couple months. Since then, computer crashed. Completely re-formatted computer, reinstalled Vista, got all Vista updates, re-installed Sims 2 from scratch. Copied all User Documents (saves) from backup over the top of the original user stuff from fresh install. Game loads up, but NO Neighborhoods! I saved the original User Stuff from fresh install on desktop -- if I switch that back in, all the neighborhoods are there, along with my Lot bin. I have tried EVERYTHING. SimPE sees all my stuff, as does Sim2Pack clean installer. Can I use SimPE to "repackage" the Neighborhood and replace the Neighborhood Package files? I tried a million different things with the Cache and Neighborhood Manager files. My kids have played this game nonstop for 6 years with no problems and they are frantic about this. I thought I wouldn't have any problem with backup. I've restored Sims 1, Sims 3 and even Sims 2 backups before with no problems at all.... HELP!

<If this is a double-post, sorry. I wasn't sure if the Community was the same as the location of my original post>

 

[Hannah Sophia Grace Brooklyn]

this happened to me too! if you know and answer please get back to me. i've talked to the people at help.thesims.com/chat twice! they told me they would email me with in 24 hours.....nothing. i will go back another time if they dont email me. i will tell you what to do.

 

[ami-mercury]

this happened to me too! if you know and answer please get back to me. i've talked to the people at help.thesims.com/chat twice! they told me they would email me with in 24 hours.....nothing. i will go back another time if they dont email me. i will tell you what to do.

I should have posted this earlier, but I had trouble logging on. You'll never guess what was wrong ... I felt so stupid, but really, I didn't know! I had installed EVERY single Stuff Pack and Expansion Pack (we have them all) in the right order and asked my kids, SEVERAL TIMES, if they thought we needed to have the Sims 2 Store installed. They said no, not at all. Even though we had it before the big crash, they said it's just if you want to buy new content for the game. So I didn't install it. Who knew???? I DID need to install the Sims 2 Store Edition, because once you have it, it acts like an Expansion Pack and changes the way your game does the saves. So, unless you have EVERY EP, SP ..... and ...... The Sims 2 Store Edition (if you had it before), your saved games won't work right. Once, I installed it, miracle of miracles!!! everything was fine. All back to normal. I hope this helps you and anyone else that has this problem. Good luck!!

 

[Hannah Sophia Grace Brooklyn]

I should have posted this earlier, but I had trouble logging on. You'll never guess what was wrong ... I felt so stupid, but really, I didn't know! I had installed EVERY single Stuff Pack and Expansion Pack (we have them all) in the right order and asked my kids, SEVERAL TIMES, if they thought we needed to have the Sims 2 Store installed. They said no, not at all. Even though we had it before the big crash, they said it's just if you want to buy new content for the game. So I didn't install it. Who knew???? I DID need to install the Sims 2 Store Edition, because once you have it, it acts like an Expansion Pack and changes the way your game does the saves. So, unless you have EVERY EP, SP ..... and ...... The Sims 2 Store Edition (if you had it before), your saved games won't work right. Once, I installed it, miracle of miracles!!! everything was fine. All back to normal. I hope this helps you and anyone else that has this problem. Good luck!!

Oh Okay. I fixed mine so its all good.....but i didnt install the store edition when it asked me too! how do i install it? please help thanks.