Re: Question regarding problems launching, user files and login rewards
@puzzlezaddict - Thank you for your response and apologies for my late reply, but it was a busy weekend.
I followed your suggestion and looked for my son's as well as my user ID in my copy of the old UserSettings and fortunately they were both there, so this made me more confident that replacing the file would work beyond theory. By the way, the new accountDataDB.package hadn't been generated yet. That must happen at some point after the point where my game crashed.
On to the good news - creating a clean Sims 4 folder worked! The game now launches again and I got my Happy at Home rewards back after deleting the accountDataDB.package and replacing the UserSettings with a copy of my old one. Repeating the process in another clean folder where I then checked my son's account also proved successful with his rewards appearing as well. So all is well in that regard.
However, the bad news is that I now have the dreaded shopping cart in my game. Despite several updates that thing hadn't crept into my game yet although it was present in my son's and both were drawing from the same folder. Now if I could just figure out which setting or what string kept it at bay and replace it, I would be very happy. I'm so disappointed in EA/Maxis for putting that thing in there in the first place.
Anyway, thank you so much for providing advice and assistance. It is much appreciated 🙂