SIMS4 data disappearing

Question

My boyfriend has been playing the sims for a while and he's ran into a problem that we can’t find a solution to. He was trying to play one day, when the sims wouldn’t load, He would click “play” on steam, it’d tell us it was launching, then running, and would suddenly stop running without loading the game. He was told to&nbsp;clear his EA cache, (not the sims cache, the entire EA app cache). This did work and the game did start running again, but all his data was lost.&nbsp;Saved worlds, sims, gallery and mods disappeared, when he started the game it even said “start simming” so he believes the cache clearing cause all his data to disappear and reset his progress.&nbsp;It’s important to note that it is on the same account as his old save(s), and the only editing he did was change a shortcut name. The only thing we could find was a slot_000002 save which when we put into the save folder ended up causing the game to not launch again. Any help is appreciated and we want to know if all his data is lost.

puzzlezaddict · Answer

@p_sty1&nbsp; What shortcut name did you change?

Clearing the EA App's cache should never touch any Sims 4 user data (saves, mods, etc.).&nbsp; The App cache data is stored in entirely different locations, which cannot be changed, and the process to clear the cache is automated and only looks in the relevant locations.&nbsp; It's much more likely that this is a coincidence, that something else happened at the same time to delete or move the user data.

If you were told to move the Sims 4 folder in Documents &gt; Electronic Arts, that would remove (but not delete) all user data, which is the point of the clean folder test.&nbsp; Please let me know if you've done this, or messed with the contents of Electronic Arts in any way.

Please also let me know where you've installed Sims 4 itself.&nbsp; You can see it in the EA App under Sims 4 &gt; Manage &gt; View properties.

p_sty1 · Answer

Thank you so much for the reply, sorry for slow response but he changed the shortcut name for SIMS4, which he said caused the game to not open so he deleted the shortcut and made a new one.

I should also clarify he has it installed and linked to steam, I am asking on the EA forums as I presumed it had something to do with that and we have already tried to repair the game and verify files through steam.

We have not moved the sims 4 folder, but we have put a Slot_00002 file (which I presume is a save) into the now empty sims4 save folder in the Electronic arts folder with hopes it would restore some of the lost data but nothing came from that.

The game is installed in windows C drive through Steam > steamapps > common > thesims4

puzzlezaddict · Answer

@p_sty1&nbsp; Please download Everything, from VoidTools, which is a free and highly efficient (and trustworthy) search tool.&nbsp; Open it and search for Slot_ (just like that), expand the window sideways so you can see the full path to each result, and post a screenshot here.&nbsp; I'd like to see whether any other saves are hidden somewhere on your computer, and also the names of the existing saves, i.e. whether they're in exactly the right format.

p_sty1 · Answer

Hello! Will do tomorrow morning, sorry we are away on a road trip so I wanted to reply to show I haven't ditched the post and am still looking for help. Thank you for the advice and will keep you updated.&nbsp;

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SIMS4 data disappearing

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