Corrupted save(s)
soo theres a bit of context to this ill go ahead and skip
long story short, sims 4 documents deleted, recovered using a disk scanner to recover lost data
after i thought "cool i got my saves back", only restored the save data files excluding setting files, mods, etc because it was causing it to crash on boot (basically excluding everything outside of the saves folder)
so upon boot, it just treats it like its my first time launching the game, after going in, making some character to have access to the "load save" option, ill click on a recovered file to just get put back into the dummy savegame that was created to access that menu option
tried recovering the save file through the in game option, same thing, tried creating a game and renaming an old one to have the same name thinking i could trick the game into loading the old one since its under the same save name, nope
not really sure where to go from here, or just stop trying
i dont really think they could have gotten corrupt in the recovery since i havent written anything to my HDD since it happened (to allow them to be recovered), though it could happen i suppose
anyways, is there really anything to do/try from here? not really sure, maybe some file i need to switch over from the recovered folder to allow it to recognize them properly or something
side note since my snipping tool is acting weird and not allowing me to screenshot my save folder, its just a bunch of .save files and some with ver0-1-2 behind them, no additional files or folders outside of them
@TheSpoi It's possible, and even likely, that your saves were corrupted during the recovery process. Data recovery is almost never exact, even with professional services, and Sims 4 saves are much more sensitive to bad or missing data than a more standard file like a document. If the game can't read the save, there's really nothing else you can do.
Having said that, it's worth testing every single save, including backups, to see if you can find a working one. Any save file that ends in .verx is a backup, slightly older copy of the .save file with the same name. These backups can be renamed so the game will recognize them, for example Slot_00000002.save.ver1 can become Slot_00000021.save instead. The format has to be precisely that: Slot_ followed by an eight-digit hexidecimal (digits 0 to 9, a to f) number followed by .save for the game to read it.
And just in case this is the issue, make sure that the saves are inside the Saves folder within the Sims 4 folder the game is actually reading. Here's how to find that folder:
https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/
