I have a very nasty problem with my Sims 3 game. When I tried to save my game I got error 12, which means the file i'm trying to save on is corrupted. I've had this problem before and could always fix it by just using the backup folder and get back to where I last saved my game. The problem is... there is no backup folder! I have no idea how this is possible. All the saves that were left ended with .bad which means they are corrupted and can't be used anymore. Does this mean I lost my whole game? Or is there another way to recover my neighborhood? Any help is much appreciated!

No problem! I hope so too. I just moved the files from the old library folder into my new game folder and I have my old sims back in my bin, yay! So after all they were stored somewhere! I have to start their lives over from the beginning though but i'm so happy to have them back and that saves me a lot of time and work. Thank you again! This was very useful 🙂

@dmacay95 Okay, it's best to start with a clean game folder. Move your existing TS3 folder out of Documents and onto your desktop. Launch the game, go to the Main Menu, set your options the way you want, and quit. Don't move any of your content over yet (you can do that later). You may get "objects missing" messages, but that's fine, you don't need to save your progress; this is just for testing. Next, launch the game again, and start a new save in the world of your corrupted saves, which I'm guessing is Sunset Valley. You don't have to spend much time there, just pick a random family, play for a few minutes, save, quit (without saving, as a separate step), and then go into Saves inside the new game folder. You'll see a folder labeled with your new save name, with a few different files inside. Delete everything in that folder except for SunsetValley.nhd. Now go into your old game folder, the one you moved to the desktop. Inside whichever save you want to try to rescue, copy all the files except for the .nhd, and paste them into the folder for the new save you created, where you just deleted most of the files. So what you've done is generate a clean .nhd file and combined that with the other files from your corrupt save. If you have multiple .nhd files, as you would if your sims had gone on vacation, leave them for now. It probably wouldn't matter if they were in there, since only one .nhd file is loaded at a time, but since this is for testing anyway, there's no reason to add them in yet. The exception would be if your sims are currently on vacation, in which case definitely move the file for that world as well. Before you launch the game and try to load the save, delete the five cache files in your game folder in Documents. They should be deleted regularly anyway, even in the absence of game issues. While you're troubleshooting, delete them every time you quit the game. For reference, they are: CASPartCache.package compositorCache.package scriptCache.package simCompositorCache.package socialCache.package If your save loads, great, you can quit without saving and transfer your store stuff, custom content, mods, etc. into the new game folder. Do it in batches, testing each time to make sure the save still works. Here's a list of all the files in your game folder, with explanations of what you might want to keep: https://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/01/faq-user-files.html If your save doesn't load, you can repeat the process with your other bad saves. It's best to start with a clean game folder and a new .nhd file each time, just to be absolutely sure there's no cross-contamination.

@dmacay95 The original technique was for recovering the sims that were active the last time you saved the game. I didn't realize there were other sims in the town that you also wanted back. The data for each save is spread out among several different files, and any one of them could potentially be the issue. So, if you want to experiment, you could use the same approach as before to replace one of those files at a time, testing to see if you get a usable game that includes all the sims you care about. Unfortunately though, it's possible that the data you want is already too corrupted to recover. I'm sorry that there isn't a more useful way to approach this. The unfortunate fact is that saves get corrupted, and sometimes they're too far gone to repair. In the future, aside from keeping backup saves, you might want to look into adding mods to clean up your game. There are a few that don't change gameplay at all, they just remove bad data and reset stuck situations when necessary. It's the only way many of us have been able to maintain games over a number of generations without having to periodically transfer our sims to a clean save.

@dmacay95 I haven't experimented enough with swapping around the files within the save folder to be sure exactly what information is stored in each. (Some of it is obvious, but not all.) But the .nhd file is the big one, other than TravelDB if your sims travel a lot. So I would imagine that most of the data you want to preserve is in there, unfortunately. If you can't find some working combination of files that includes the .nhd, you might not be able to recover the save. Just in case you didn't know, the sims you create in-game are also saved to Library when you exit CAS, as are any lots you save after building them. Anything that has an entry in the in-game bin you see in Edit Town also has a Library entry. The sims there won't have progressed though—they'll be the same clean slates they were when they came out of CAS. The save-preserving mods are all from NRaas. ErrorTrap and Overwatch work together to clean up errors, corrupt data, and stuck sims. ErrorTrap is the only core mod on this list; be sure to get the version that corresponds to your type of install (Origin/Steam/disc). MasterController loads a very long list of commands for you to run. The most useful for the health of your saves are the ones to reset sims, objects, lots, or the whole town at once. Traveler replaces the broken travel transition with its own and makes errors much less likely. Register controls the Service (maids, repairpeople, burglars, etc.) and Role (assigned to role-giving objects, like cash registers) sims. You may or may not need it, but it's very helpful if you notice issues with either type of sim. Traffic prevents the unnecessary excess spawning of vehicles. If Overwatch is reporting on hundreds or thousands of vehicles cleaned up every night, or your town is overwhelmed by ice cream trucks, Traffic will shut that all down. All of these mods work just fine on default settings, so you can drop them in your game folder and not pay too much attention. ErrorTrap in particular creates a lot of reports, both in-game notifications and scripterrors in your game folder, but those are mostly just it doing its job; there's no reason to worry unless you're having issues with your save. In that case, you can take the scripterrors to NRaas and ask that someone read them for you. The people there are very friendly and helpful, and someone will let you know what's going on, and what needs to be fixed.

@dmacay95 I've moved your post to the Sims 3 board, since it's game-specific. The backup save is the data from the second to last time you saved, so if you only saved successfully once after loading the backup, you wouldn't have a new backup. And if you only played one session, it's possible that all the save attempts were corrupted in some way. There are techniques to try to recover a save that's gone bad, although none of them are guaranteed to work. I can walk you through them, if you want. But it would help to know exactly what is in your Saves folder (please list it out, and tell me which save you're trying to recover). Please also check inside CurrentGame and let me know if there's anything there.

Save files corrupted Sims 3 | EA Forums

13 Replies

puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 years ago
@dmacay95 I'm sorry that swapping around the files didn't help, but it's not always possible to recover a save beyond a certain point. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Hopefully, the mods will prevent you from getting to the same point in the future, or at the very least, you'll be able to revert to a backup and start resetting things with MasterController to clean up the save.

Library is in your game folder in Documents\EA\TS3, just as Saves is. The files are labeled with random strings of characters, but you can rename them however you want; just keep the .package extension at the end. The creation dates should help you distinguish among the various files, or you could put one at a time into a clean game folder and see what shows up in the in-game bin in Edit Town.
dmacay95
7 years ago
No problem! I hope so too. I just moved the files from the old library folder into my new game folder and I have my old sims back in my bin, yay! So after all they were stored somewhere! I have to start their lives over from the beginning though but i'm so happy to have them back and that saves me a lot of time and work. Thank you again! This was very useful 🙂
CaramelCandyz
4 years ago
Thank you so much you have no idea how many hours I’ve been trying to fix my game that I spent hours literally hours on I was about to cry and I saw your conversation and it helped me a ton I got my stuff back and I am so glad I literally was about to cry I am in debt to you

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Save files corrupted Sims 3

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