I'm just wondering if anyone has had any luck in actually fixing this problem? (besides that one post that doesn't seem to apply to any of us).

Operating system Windows XP Home
Computer specs 2.39 Ghz processor, 512 MB RAM, some crappy integrated video card with not enough VRAM...I might be able to figure out what kind if you need it
Games Sims 2 DVD, patched; Uni, patched
Details of Neighbourhood loss I had no neighbourhoods. I had just created a new user account, to do some playing with a completely cc-free game...first time into it, I had no neighbourhoods to choose from. There was one box that had an image of what looked like a terrain mesh, but the three normal neighbourhoods weren't there. I didn't try going into the mesh one, I was a little afraid to try. I did create a custom neighbourhood, and decided to worry about it later.
Neighbourhood File details There are two neighbourhood files. I assume one is that funky mesh one, and the other is my custom neighbourhood. The tutorial "neighbourhood" is also there.
Sim PE Investigation I haven't checked in that profile yet. I'll come back and update.
What changed on your system immediately before the corruption? The only thing I had done was create that new user profile.
Any other relevant information I haven't tried playing again yet, or in my normal profile. I'll update after I try those.

I really hope there's some solution to this. One of the reasons I wanted a clean game was to play some of the Maxis families that I've messed around with too much in my normal game. I've also used another profile for the game before, and it worked fine then, so I don't think that has anything to do with it. I also don't know if this is just completely different from everyone else that's posted. Either way, I hope it gets resolved. I don't want to have to reinstall, if I can help it.

That's what we are trying to find out from this thread- a common link so that we can figure out how to prevent/ solve this. Could you all try an experiment- cut and paste the neighbourhood manager file to the desktop from My Documents\ EA Games\ The Sims2\ neighbourhoods. This should force the game to regenerate this file. I'm wondering if it will make any difference?

Ok I really need help!.. Im getting frustrated since I cant play the sims... here are my details

Operating system- Win XP Home
Computer specs- 2.0 Ghz processor, 512 RAM, Nvidia G-Force FX, 60 GB, 20 gb free
Games- The Sims 2 (No patches, no expansions)
Details of Neighbourhood loss- One day I was playing the sims and I decided to just get out because I was tired, so then I closed the sims 2 game and I turned my computer off, the next day turned it on and when I loaded the sims I realized that "StrangeTown" was gone, I was only able to see Veronaville and Pleasantview" I was freaked out, so I searched for help online and someone told me to copy the files from My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/ Neighborhood to "C:/Program file/Ea Games/ The Sims 2/ Userdata/Neighborhood (I did that, and made a copy of my current My documents files but it didnt worked, I even tried erasing the cache file thing and it didnt worked..)
Neighbourhood File- I can see everything, nothing is missing
Sim PE Investigation:I can open my neighborhood (Strangetown) with it but I cant access the SIm Browser, it appears as blank and if I check the folder all my characters are there though
Any other relevant information: Nothing... just what I described above..I havent used cheats or delete my downloads

I will really appreaciate your help, Im desperate!!!

Im sorry for double-posting but after conducting some experiments I found the source of trouble. I found that in order for the neighborhood to be displayed in the menu the file inside the folder in Neighborhood/N002 called N002_/Neighborhood has to be properly set, the only problem is that I dont know how to fix this file or at least make it available to use (and remplacing it with another one will only cause you to have your sims placed in different houses and some sim family gone..) I dont exactly know how to use Sim PE but I noticed that if you load this file into neighborhood browsing, the sim browser and lot information wont be displayed.. If any of you have any clue can you help me out?

wait_for_me, could you just try this little experiment- go to My Documents/ EA Games/ The Sims2/ Neighbourhoods and cut and paste the neighbourhoodManager.package file to your desktop. Now go to Program files/ EA Games/ The Sims2/ TS Data/ Res/ User Data/ Neighbourhoods and copy the neighbourhoodmanager.package file- paste it into your Documents folder where your old neighbourhoodmanager file was. Does that make any difference?

Our neighborhoods suddenly were taking much longer than usual to load - no load-screen action for over a half hour as opposed to the usual 20 minutes it takes to load since we added Nightlife - so we Force-Quit. We removed everythng that had been installed since the last successful play and launched again. We got to Strangeville after the "normal" 20 minutes of loading and found the Marie Celeste - all the homes we made were there (some even with a taxi waiting to pick up the residents) but the only Sims were the stock Maxis residents. All the families we made were gone.
We were finally able to find the "add neighbour to family" item in the testingcheatsenabled tool thanks to Calidan's guide, but the members of thefour families we were working on did not show up as available. Oddly, two of the three members of the stock Geek household appeared in the lot loading screen but did not appear as family members once the house came up.

Great - we just went to the neighborhood select screen after exiting the one we were looking at and the three stock neighborhoods just show blank terrain mesh in the previews. Everything is missing in Veronaville - no lots at all, but only the most recent lot is missing from Strangeville.

MacOS 10.4.7
PowerBook G4 1.5GHz 1.5GB RAM 128Mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
Sims2 +Univ +NL (did not apply recent patch to make it a universal binary)
No hacks - just custom content. When no neighborhoods would load after waiting well over a half hour each we removed everything that had been added since the last successful play. This is when we had the Marie Celeste syndrome. SimPE - not Mac-compatible and WooHoo does give us much in the way of diagnostics yet.

Quit Sims2 without saving and relaunched. Neighborhood previews are back, but otherwise the same - Strangeville has lost all our created families but their lots are intact, Veronaville has no lots at all and now the preview of Pleasantville is terrain-mesh only.

Game is often left left running for many days - just paused before laptop is slept at night.

added:
We tried the suggested replacement of the neighbourhoodmanager.package file since it's Modified time was within the past few minutes. That appeared to fix things as the neighborhood previews were back and showed the green diamonds of occupancy. Entering them revealed 2 of the 3 to be lotless again and the previews again went to terrain grid view.

We are about to copy our Downloads folder to a safe palce and do a full reinstall & patch over the existing copy of the game.

I have Original CD Version with 4 discs, University EP, and NL EP.
Also, Windows XP Professional.
"Unknown CPU Type
1.79GHz, 640 MB of RAM."


It started on Monday, I was playing and everything was fine. I went into the University part, sending my sims to college, and I put them in a dorm and chose everything for them. I changed a sims appearance, everything was fine. I get on on Tuesday, after saving the game and all, I go back in the dorm I put them in.. and It didn't save correctly.

I did everything, yet again and then I changed another sims appearance. And her face dissapeared! It was a body with hair. Later, it eventually worked right, but it took alot of tries. I then quit for that moment, and made SURE to save it, then clicked quit.

Later that night, I got on, went into the university part, and BAM! My dorm was gone? I clicked on the lot, and it went to load, then turned my screen black for a second, then came up with the university neighborhood. It did this twice and I gave up and quit.

Wednesday [Yesterday], I come home to play, Go to find my custom neighborhood, and its gone.

I checked my My Documents/EAGames/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods/N006 folder.
EVERYTHING WAS THERE.
And still is.

Today...
I backed that up, and slowly started to add things from the original folder to see if anything happened. I had everything added and it was still all right. I added my N006_Neighborhood.package file, and the whole neighborhood dissapears again.

And that's where I am now.
HeLp?

--Ellery

-Operating system: Win XP Pro
-Computer specs :3.02 Ghz processor, 768 MB for RAM
-Games:base,NL,UNI,OFB /patches: base and OFB
-Details of Neighbourhood loss :i had the 3 original neighbourhoods and a custom one,i was playing only in my custom neighbourhood. and its gone...

-I recently removed all the EA folder to reinstall the sims2 and packs. and i did not use any hacks which may affect an entire neighbourhood.

-Neighbourhood File details: all the details are still in the folder( the lots, the charecters....)

-What changed on your system immediately before the corruption: i don't think anything changed.

Any other relevant information:
My game was crashing alooooot, especially my neighbourhood (from the objects and the hacks i think) but i used to it, and i was reloading the game and play as usual.
Once i was having a real problem to enter my neighbourhood, so when i finally entered, i decided to remove any possible hacked lots and community lots(that usually the game was crashing when i was trying to enter them), so i removed many of them, then i enterd a lot to play a family normally, i was playing then suddenly the game crashed (which is normal with me), when i reloaded the game again i found that my custom neighbourhood was gone...!!

im sorry if my post is long...
but plz help me, i have been playing this neighbourhood for months...plz...

I lost a lot, rather than the whole hood. Duno if this is the spot for it, but it doesn't hurt anyone to try.

Operating system Win XP Pro S2
Computer specs Athlon 64 3200+: 2.2ghz; 1gb ram; Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
Games Base, Uni, NL, OfB, FFS, and GLS. Not sure about the patches.
Details of Neighbourhood loss Lot vanished on my custom hood's college campus. It was a 3x3 lot, and the building was tall, but not very big. This happened before when the lot gets really big, and with lots of stuff. However it's also happened before when a not so big lot. I noticed that I had a problem with placing a floor tile down; it wouldn't get placed unless I shift clicked. I immidietly saved and exited the game, upon restarting the lot was gone, and instead left is a large blue square.
Neighbourhood File details Everything's in place.
Sim PE Investigation The lot appears in the hood.
What changed on your system immediately before the corruption Nothing noticable.

Win XP Pro
Amd Athlon Dual Core 3800 64bit, 1024MB DDR2
I have all the expansions (Uni,NL,OFB,FF,GL,Pets)

I only have Veronaville left in my menu, and the Neighborhoods folder at my docs folder has all three neighborhoods(N001,N002,N003).

It happened when I installed the FF pack, any reason why it happened ?


Thanks

The other day, my neighborhood disappeared also. As I was saving my last gameplay, my laptop fell, and I had to restart which resulted in a corrupted saved game. Now that particular NH is gone. I've been trying to find a solution by trial and error and checking forums online. I uninstalled the pets EP and played my last addon which was GL. All 3 NH were there but completely brand new. The only backup I have is after the corruption occured. So I transfered that backup to the brand new folder except for the N001_Neighboorhood DBPF package file. When I loaded the game, I still had all 3 NH but they were still brand new. So I brought over that package file, and that's when my NH disappeared. SO I believe that's the corrupted file. When compared to the other 2 NH, their package file is larger in size where as the corrupted file is only 1k. I just don't know how to fix it. ? The SimPE doesn't work, unless I'm just not using it correctly.

The neighbourhood file is written to each time you save the game (memories, family relationships etc), so if it was corrupted during save and is only 1K in size this means that the information is not there, so SimPE will not be able to recover it.

Simsample, I tried what you suggested and it did nothing to fix my game. I didn't notice any changes at all. Hope that information helps.

I lost pleasentview i was so upset i had worked so hard and got it just the way i wanted it.i lost my houses,sims everthing
WHAT HAPPENED:I was surfing the net and still had the sims running but i had done this before and it was ok and i wasnt on the net long because i wanted to go back on my game,anyway i went back to my game and the screen started to flicker and wouldnt let me log off so i had to just shut the computer down but this had happened before and it just didnt safe what i had done that day(WELL NOT THIS TIME)i went to start my game up again and pleasentview was gone,but the werid thing is i still have everything on my computer but cant seem to put them back into my new neighbourhood i made not even a storytellers picture,could anyone help me how to but my houses,sims back into my new neighbourhood please?
i would be so grateful i was writing a story as well and cant finish it without my pictures or sims or houses?

christalla, could you please edit your post with the information that Simsample requests in the first post?

Thanks Amy, this is great information.

Hi Julianarosalia i dont understand what you mean,im new to all this?
Anyway i found my story in strangetown,dont ask me how they got there but its just the sims and my houses i want back now,at least i can now get to finish my story.

christalla if you go to the first page of this thread, Simsample has a list of questions about your computer. If you could try and answer them as best as you are able that would help us try to figure out why your neighborhood/lots/sims have disappeared.

Ok i will do Thankyou again for being so help full.

Operating system Windows XP Home Edition Ver 2002 Service Pack 2

Computer specs AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 2.16 Ghz processor, 1.00 GB
of RAM, Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 256mb DDR AGP 8x/4x

Games CD versions of Sims 2, University, Nightlife and OFB - Glamour
Life expansion. Sims 2, UNI, NL and OFB CD patches

Details of Neighbourhood loss Lost custom neighborhood that had been
played for 4-5 months. Pleasantview and Veronaville still show on main menu but have not played them at all - only play with the custom neighborhood.

Last incident I played my game last night and all was fine until I sent a teen sim on a date. I had her ask her date back to her house because that was one of her wants. He walked off of the lot instead of getting into the car - she drove off and the game crashed completely and restarted my computer due to a bad device driver which it has been doing now for some reason. Game has crashed on several occasions with the error message from Microsoft saying that there is a bad device driver but my neighborhood never dissapeared. Loaded my game this morning and my custom hood was gone.

Have not removed any downloads or hacks - have only done some recoloring of clothing in Bodyshop and imported them into game.

All neighborhood files for custom hood are still showing. SimPE shows the picture of my custom hood but nothing else - no sims, townies or NPC files.

My hacks include a few by Squinge and Merola (sp?)

Not sure what is going on but this is the 2nd disappearance for me and starting all over really bites. Playing a computer game should not be this stressful

Thanks for any help you can provide


Could you also try this:
Go to My Documents/ EA Games/ The Sims2/ Neighbourhoods and cut and paste the neighbourhoodManager.package file to your desktop. Now go to Program files/ EA Games/ The Sims2/ TS Data/ Res/ User Data/ Neighbourhoods and copy the neighbourhoodmanager.package file- paste it into your Documents folder where your old neighbourhoodmanager file was. Does that make any difference

I tried the above suggestion but nothing happened. I was hoping it would but I still get nothing.

Operating system: Windows XP Home edition
Computer specs: 2.80 Ghz processor, 1024mb RAM, Raedon 9800 pro
Games: All expansions packs and the two "stuff" packs. Note: Pets was not installed at the time issues first arrived.
Details of Neighbourhood: I played only 1 family in Pleasantview. After crashing at a loading screen several times it removed only Pleasantview. No custom neighborhoods, items, hacks, sims, clothes etc. Absoloutly nothing not included in standard install.
Neighbourhood File details: It appears as though all files are there. Similarly, none of them are '0kb' meaning they haven't actually wiped. All characters/lots/stories etc appear intact.
Sim PE Investigation: Dont have it.
System Changes: No system changes, the only point of interest i can offer is that my computer has been freezing alot lately. Never whilst playing sims, but needless to say it needs a reformat.
Any other relevant information:
A: I have tried replacing, swapping and removing the neighbourhoodsmanager files, as you have directed throughout, all to no avail.
B: The exact series of events before the removal of my neighborhood is as follows - It startied with a crash whilst in the loading screen between home to community lot. After restarting the game i tried again to the same effect. I think i actually tried a third time as well.
Finally next time i entered my families lot, the car they had left in had returned back to the default yellow, and similarly lost its car alarm. And finally, after having crashed in the loading screen for the last time, when i restarted Pleasantview had gone walkabouts.
C: After all of the above had happened, i waited a few days and bought the Pets EP, hoping the install would correct things, to no avail.

And finally thankyou for being willing to sift through thousands of posts for a correlation.

Kopika, this faq will walk you through finding your systems specs: http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=112711

Done.

Also, this topic has been going for about 3 months, what solutions has anyone else had? Or have you all simply found new sims?

Its a shame to know that one day and entire neighborhood can pack up and leave at any time....

All of the information so far points to this being a savegame corruption, without a seemingly common cause. So far it seems that the only way to proceed is to scrap the affected hood(s) and start over.