All of my households disappeared
Hello there! Recently I had to do a factory reset of my laptop and everything was backed up on OneDrive, including TS4 files. Yesterday I decided to reinstall the game and everything seemed normal ...
Forum Discussion
@BlueberryCZ The MCCC files are all the ones there beginning mc_ - the mod consists of multiple files. But you also have a LOT of issues in here. You've got old versions of a LOT of mods -- almost everything I see there with a version number there's an update for. You've got duplicates of mods (the same mod in a folder and not in a folder). Unless you deleted Slice of Life yesterday and updated it to the revised version that just came out, that's broken. But part of your issue *could* be that there are Tray files in the Mods folder. Those files ending .householdbinary, .hhi, and .trayitem go in Tray, not Mods. Regardless of what the cause in that Mods folder is, it's almost certainly there, and can be resolved so it doesn't happen again.
So, here's a workflow for you:
- Move those files to the Tray folder.
- Move the CC - hair, clothes, body parts (not sliders), furniture, decor objects - to folders on your desktop. (We'll come back to those.)
- Delete the file called localthumbcache.
- Make a list of your mods that are left in the Mods folder by creator and name, and then delete them.
- Use the list to go get new copies of the mods, after checking if they're actually broken rather than having a working copy. See Broken/Updated Mods, including "Previously Broken." This is also a good time to pick and choose mods you're actually using.
- For each mod you redownload, read the installation instructions; they might have changed. In those installation instructions, focus on when you have to pick and choose between files, what other mods you need to have, and what mods conflict with it. Organize your mods into folders, so that you aren't using a mix of folders and not-folders. You might want to look at the examples in How to Use Mods and CC .
- After the mods are done, test in game. You can load a previous version of your save for this.
- Then copy the CC back, but take this opportunity to check for duplicates and organize the content that's inside those CC folders.
Yeah, I probably messed up by hopping straight into the game (I last played last summer lol) and not checking the mod updates. :/ I'm going to check everything and do as you said, thank you! Rn I'm honestly scared to download anything because of the CC malwares going around, but I'll try to be safe.
How could the Tray files have gotten into there? I don't recall ever moving those files there.
Thank you so much!
@BlueberryCZ Some mods come with tray files as part of how the mod works. When you download those, you need to put the tray files in the right place.
I've got advice on save mod/CC downloading in How to Use Mods and CC . If you have any questions about what to look for beyond that advice, I'm happy to help.
Tried moving the tray files into the tray folder, and unfortunately Windows tell me that those are duplicate files and only one of them was not a dupe.
Working on the CC right now.
Edit: Nope, nothing work, the households are still gone. Should I try using Tray Importer to at least get them back somehow, or will that mess the game up even more? :/
@BlueberryCZ I don't expect this to make the households come back. You'll need to load an earlier version of your save for that, and that will only help if you didn't save over it too many times. The goal here is that when you do have a version with your Sims in it, it doesn't happen again.
Aaalright. I probably have bad luck, because the earliest save is also already messed up.
What can I do to be able to play? I thought it was possible to import the Sims (just like people import Sims from the internet) and I'd just have to accept the fact that all of their lore is gone. Unfortunately, all townies are gone too, so this is not an option, right? :/
@BlueberryCZ If you don't have a recoverable save with your Sims in it (and do test that with an empty Mods folder!), you'll be starting at "New" in the Main Menu. If you have Tray versions of your Sims, you can import them from your Library. Premade Sims will be regenerate at starting levels.
It's really frustrating to have to start over for sure ☹️ I just did it in '23 after many years with a save that corrupted beyond where I felt like actually dealing with the process of recovering it. I took a few of my favourite households from my library into a new save instead, and I'm actually playing a premade house for different in it right now.
I do advise keeping a regular folder backup so you can go more than 5 saves back. For most cases, that's enough to recover pretty fully from. In others, it's enough to help you recover more content to import into your next new save.
Okay, thank you sosomuch! I'm gonna have to accept the loss haha.
Alsooo, do you think it's possible to export my houses into the new save?
@BlueberryCZ If the old save loads the World Map, yes! You do, though, have to go to the World map, load each build you want in Build/Buy, then save it to the Library from there. Placing them from the Library onto the map in the new save is faster, thankfully.
