@socrmom13 Try pulling your entire TS3 game folder out of Documents and onto your desktop. A clean folder will spawn the next time you launch the game. Don't put in any mods or custom content; just load each EA world and have a look around. (Be sure to quit to desktop between worlds.) Do the premade sims show up in the newly loaded towns? If they're not listed in Edit Town, move in some sim or family and click on a few of the houses to see whether the game recognizes anyone as living there.
If the new towns really are just as unpopulated as the old ones, please run a dxdiag on your computer, post the results at pastebin.com or another free filesharing site, and drop a link here. You'll have to break up the link (use spaces or something) since you're still a new member.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/
