I got a new hard drive and backed up my game. I don't remember specifically how I made the backup, I assume I just copied my folder onto my other backup drive and then put it back where it was before. This was a bit over a year ago. I've just gotten around to wanting to get into the game again and am attempting to restore my saves. My saves are all greyed out as "Ramirez" files. When I start new games, the sims I have in the neighborhood bins are still there. Starting a new game with them on any world worked fine, aside from their CC being all missing. I resetup my CC, including the worlds, and went back into the game. The saves still didn't work but the sims in the bin were now correct.

I attempted the fix of starting a new save, borrowing the Meta.data file from the new save and adding it fresh to my old save folders. That gave me the option to select the save with no thumbnail, but it immediately threw an error attempting to load it.

Going back through my files, I noticed something very strange. Many of the file names had dates added to them. All of the downloads and mods, the save games, the world packages. Logs and caches. Almost everything. I wonder if this is part of why it isn't loading properly. It would make sense to me, but simply erasing the odd portion of the name didn't help. In fact, it made the save I attempted it with no longer selectable again.

I've also noticed that my Worlds are apparently in the game, and inexplicably many of them have duplicated themselves several times. I'm not sure wlhy that happened either.

I've been trying everything I've seen suggested, from making sure my explorer is closed when starting the game, deleting the caches, making sure onenote is off (i don't think I actually have it installed on this device) and turning off my antivirus. I'm sure there must be something I'm missing, but I don't know what.

I am running the game on Steam, 64 bit windows 10, other specs in third image. I don't know if it matters if I blocked out the device ID, i honestly don't remember if thats a safety thing or not. The game was working beautifully before I backed it up and tried to install. It could be that I've just really screwed up trying to restore it. I just copied the old folder in over the new one.

I'm not sure if this problem has to do with the Sims. I've backed up and reloaded files a dozen times, and I've never seen this happen before in restoring my game. The numbers that are trailing your world files is the date in a specific format, which is: year_month_day hour:minute:sec. This is how the backup folders for the worlds in CAW's userdata/worlds are labeled, but in your case, it also has UTC attached, letting you know that the date is in Coordinated Universal Time.

The multiple world files are what happens when you don't completely uninstall all copies of a world before reinstalling. What eventually happens is that you get different versions of the world installed, like World, World (1), World (2), World (3).

The mislabeling looks like a glitch I've seen when trying to use software to recover files I accidentally deleted off of a hard or flash drive. I've never played The Sims using Steam but I have played Steam games, and I can't imagine the client doing this. If you used a third party app to backup and restore your files, that could be the culprit.

It definitely was the result of the backup and restore, but I don't think I used a program to do it. I thought I just copy/pasted to the drive and back. It was a while ago though so I don't remember specifically. What I'd like to figure out is if the mislabeling is what's causing my problem and if there's a way to restore them to working order. I've got a couple that were test saves that I don't mind experimenting on a little.

In the meantime, would it make sense to try to pair down some of these worlds? There are more on the game list than there are in the folder. I wonder if that's causing some confusion as well.

It's not a question of mislabeling, but that something went screwy with the file directory structure Like, technically, if every world and save file were mislabeled in the same way, there shouldn't be an issue. But the file structure appears to be the problem.

For example, look at the difference between your /Saves folder for a world called Spell Nova and my /Saves folder for Pottersville. You have a /Saves folder for a world called Spell Nova. But you have files from different worlds in there. All the files in there should be for that world, not whatever you have there for Spell Nova. Again, all signs point to a third party program that somehow messed with your system's folder structure, and again, it looks like what happens when a file recovery app tries restoring deleted files.





So, something went screwy with your file structure.

The way that things are, I don't think it's possible to work with what you have there now. So, first of all:

What do the files look like on your original backup folder? Do they also have those numbers, or are they normal (just the name, no numbers)? If the original files on the backup look normal, then you can try and do this:

1. Do a factory reset of the Sims 3. Here is the tutorial: https://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/...installing.html.

2. To get your worlds back, get the actual world.Sims3Pack file (the ones that you click to install) and reinstall them through the launcher. They may be in your /Exports or /Dowloads folder on your backup. Or, like Boroughsburg, Hidden Springs, etc., you might have to redownload and reinstall them from scratch. Do not add back in the /InstalledWorlds folder at all.

3. Drag the following folders from backup into the newly generated Sims 3 folders: a) Saves b) Library.

If the files in your /Saves folder look normal (like HiddenSprings.sims3.backup, Boroughsburg.sims3.backup, etc), then everything will be back as before when you open the game.

If the files in your /Saves folder have the dates attached, I'm not really sure how you could restore them, since there would be a mismatch between the numbered files and the non-numbered ones. You might have to mess around with S3PE or something. I'm not sure, because I've never run into this issue before.

After what @thesims1depot wrote, I wonder what would happen if you just deleted the Lunar Lakes NHD from the folder?

Nothing would happen, because the /Save folder is for a world called Spell Nova, and that entire folder seems to have corrupted somehow, because it's containing files for two other worlds--Lunar Lakes and "Small Blank World For Placing Lots to Build On." It doesn't even have a file for Spell Nova.

Was not sure whether Spell Nova is supposed to be that "small blank world"? I do not see a world file for Spell Nova in the pics. Fairly sure Lunar Lakes does not belong. The date stamp for all the other files match though.

So, I was researching this issue last night, and it turns out that this is an annoying feature (some would say bug) of Windows Backup. If a person copies the backup files instead of using File Restore, it makes a mess of things. Besides adding timestamps, it also makes it so that programs can't recognize native files and sometimes makes duplicates. In one case, someone said that backup spawned so many duplicates, if filled up their hard drive:

Link 1: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...47-20cbbb7a1a1a

Link 2: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...estamp.3359419/

Link 3: https://windowsforum.com/threads/wi...p-issue.241658/

So, as you can see, Windows backup is pretty flaky.

In any event, I would try doing what I said before, because this will eliminate the duplicate worlds issue and besides, when it comes to restoring saves, all you need is the /Saves folder and having reinstalled the worlds from scratch. Copying over metadata files and the /InstalledWorlds folder isn't needed and will make things worse.

Maybe so, but the point is that his folders in general appear to be messed up across the board by Windows backup (see above post). On top of that, OP was talking about adding back in metadata files (which made things worse). This is not one of those problems that's going to be solved by combing through each of his saves and trying to figure out which files do and don't belong, because with all the tinkering under the hood, it's all a big mess now. Maybe the .nhd Lunar Lakes file is taken out but then the game messes up anyway, because OP pasted back in the metadata for Lunar Lakes when he should've done it for the other world. I don't know.

See what I mean? As an intellectual exercise, it's definitely interesting and a fun challenge to try to unravel and untangle the mess of these files. But after Day Three of, "I took this out but then this happened, I put that in, but now there is a new issue--what now?" it will get very tedious and burdensome. It's why I was a bit blunt in my previous response. I didn't want to go down that track. Better to start over than go through all of that.

Yes, I get that... Which is why my first step would be to remove what looks as it does not belong. Understand, just spit balling this, as I have never had this exact issue, and do not think I have seen a similar complaint.

The first response I'm definitely going to work through, it takes me a little while to parse tech instructions so I'm gonna reread a few times to make sure I'm getting it before I touch anything again, but I think the reason there are two map labeled files in my save folder is because those are the worlds those saves take place on? The save name is Spell Nova but the map its set on is a blank flat map I use for testing sims and buildings on. There's nothing on it, so it loads relatively fast. And I might have had that family travel to Lunar Lakes? That might be why that's in there too? I haven't looked at saves this closely before so I don't know if thats the standard presentation for those files.

The really unfortunate thing about my backup folder currently is that I made a backup onto an external which is now missing, then probably copied that backup onto my new harddrive. Loads of other files (including save cleaner, I just noticed) have that notation in the name. I'm going to read the links you sent and see if there's more I need to address because of this.

@Sabbit: Thanks for explaining. @LadySmoks was on the right track, but it was nice of you to clarify. That explains a lot.

I'm sorry that this happened (boooo Microsoft!) and hopefully, there's an easy solution. The links do mention some solutions and if you do a search for "how to remove timestamp from windows backup files," you should find some answers.

Hopefully between that search and the advice on how to properly restore the game in the first place I can get it working. I mostly use the game for art and 3d modeling characters and I've got several years of work I thought I had safely backed up. Now with that drive missing and this copy of that backup on my harddrive being all I've got, I'm sweating a little. Moving sucks, and moving especially sucks when you have to do it fast and need a lot of help from people who don't know what your stuff is or how you kept it organized. I'm desperately hoping it didn't get accidentally thrown out. Lots of other stuff on that drive.

@Sabbit: Is there any way you can find that missing drive? Is it completely lost or just misplaced?

Also: did you have some files backed on a cloud somewhere? When I lost my hard drive, I was able to retrieve some stuff that I had synced across various cloud services (Google Drive, One Drive, etc.).