Okay, similar things have happened to me before, though never on this scale.

Take a new snapshot in the game from a household or screen whose old pictures you can find easily in the file browser for Storytelling. Tab over to the Storytelling and compare the file name of the new picture to old pictures from the same household. The naming protocol for these pictures is snapshot_HouseholdID_individualpicID. The Household ID is how the albums identify the pictures they use. Does this element of the new snapshot's filename match the same element from the old snapshots?

This happens to me in my (borked as-shipped) Strangetown occasionally - household ID numbers will just change for no reason. It's enormously frustrating for someone who depends on story albums like I do. For it to happen to all your households in all your hoods implies a catastrophic computer event at some time since you last played.

Do your snapshots have matching thumbnails? Thumbnails are necessary for organizing your albums (though the snapshots should still show up when you open the album).

Do you have a lot of pictures in each album? The albums (webentry_HouseholdID.xml) can access every properly-named .jpg, but they have an upper limited to the number of album pages they can display. If you fill up an album, it doesn't function properly.Do you

Do you have an .xml file reader? If not, download this one, which is designed to handle Sims 2 albums specifically: http://modthesims.info/d/60033
Yes, it's old, but all you need it for right now is to confirm whether or not it can open a webentry file. If it can't, then that webentry file is likely to be corrupted in some way, which would mean that the problem is not with your pictures, but with your albums.

When I take a snapshot in game, it doesn't save. Doesn't appear in my Storytelling folder. All that is in my Storytelling folder is old pictures and Maxis screenshots. So I can't do that test.

Yes, all the regular photos have thumbnails, too.

I will try downloading that program.

Dim comment maybe - can you check the folder is not 'read only'?

@maxon how do I do that?

Under most systems you can right-click it and check properties.

Ohhhh my.

They are all checked as read only! See first photo attached.

What do I do?



And WHOA. Okay, all my photos except maybe 2 or 3 are gone in all my storytelling folders...which I guess just happened since I loaded the game. See second photo attached. Three of my folders look like this

Third photo: The only one that is full of pictures is a game I haven't loaded in a while. Thank GOD because that has Polgannon in it! There may be hope! Oh, please tell me I can at least save Polgannon...

That first image showing the folder attribute is correct. The check box has three states- checked (ticked), unchecked (empty box) and intermediate/ neutral (filled box as in your image). A read-only attribute in Folder Properties does not apply to the folder itself.


The attributes and ownership applied to the files themselves are what is relevant- however in this case it looks as though your files have been removed, and #1 suspect is usually antivirus. Check your quarantine chest maybe?

Nothing in there. I have AVG. What do I do? How do I stop this?

See on your first image, there is a 'previous versions' tab on the top of the box?

If you right click on your Neighborhoods\N00x\Storytelling folder, do you have any previous versions in there? Or perhaps do you have a backup?

If there's nothing quarantined in your AV then it's possibly not that; it's hard to say what's caused this but I would make a backup of what you do have and run an antivirus scan, to be safe. It could be a number of things- disc error, game glitch, user error... to name but a few.

If this is just affecting some of your files- for example, one of your storytelling folders but not another, then I would suspect either game glitch or accidental deletion.

ETA: the first Storytelling folder is the one in the main folder- the one in the individual 'hood folders is where your images should be with EPs. Are the images in the third picture you show (Sims2Fury) showing up in game?? Check inside your neighborhoods folders for the storytelling folder in each of those.

Oh craaaap. I'm an idiot. The neighborhood storytelling folders have all their pictures.

So, I'm right back where I was. It's all there but not showing in game.

I'm never going to figure this out...

Do you have any webentry files in there (XML)?

http://modthesims.info/d/60033 I downloaded this and yes I do. My main folder, none of the XMLs load images.

Picture is what happened when I tried to open them.

ohhhkay! My other folders the XMLs DO load!

...but Video Capture and Camera didn't work in those games either.


BUT LOOK! POLGANNON PICS!

*sobbing hysterically* I am so afraid to load that folder at all...

Make a backup (safe copy) of what you do have, and then you can experiment with the webentries to try to get your stories back in game.

Copy the Polgannon neighbourhood files to your desktop, or to an external drive (One Drive perhaps, or Sims File Share, or a flash/ thumb drive).

Does the Polgannon story show in-game? Check after you've made the safe backup.

OKAY! HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL!

I loaded my vanilla folder. It has in it the genderbent uberhood.

ALL THE PICTURES WORK.

I even tried quitting and loading again. All fine. I did try taking a picture but no go. Pictures in game do not save anymore. Video does not work. BUT my hood looks fine!

Gonna check my others. I will make backups immediately.

That being said, I don't see a way how to save my main folder's pics...

Just in case you're not aware of this - if you're using multiple The Sims 2 folders (you can, if you're careful to rename them properly), the game will only read the one named "The Sims 2". Anything in the other folders won't be read. So nothing in the "The Sims 2 fury" folder will be read by the game.

Oh, I know that

My main folder is like my fully modded one. It has some custom hoods mixed with Maxis ones.

Fury has a special challenge hood and Polgannon.

Med is my medieval defaulted folder. Think I got my only copy of Veronaville in there.

And vanilla is simply an unmodded (mostly XD) folder with normal hoods and also the genderbent uber hood.

*blows confetti*

POLGANNON WORKS

So I backed up my storytelling folders.

What do I do to prevent this from happening again?

I heard something about exceptions in AV. Should I do that?

Don't just backup the storytelling- backup the entire neighbourhoods. If they mean a lot to you then it's best to have a safe copy.


Well, I'm not really clear what did happen- you said that nothing was showing up in game earlier, so do you still have images that are missing?

Can you now take videos and images in-game?

Try restarting the computer if you cannot.

Edit:
For your antivirus, look for the settings and find where it asks you for files you wish to exclude from scanning. In my Avast AV, it looks like this:

So you see I've told the program not to check my sims installation files, nor the user files (my downloads and neighbourhoods). Otherwise, when I play my game, each time Sims 2 tries to read a file, Avast will attempt to scan it for viruses, and then Sims 2 will not be able to read the files as Avast has a 'lock' on them. Excluding the files makes avast ignore those files, as I know they are safe 'cos I scanned them when I downloaded them, or else I created them in-game.

My main folder the images are not loading. The other folders are working fine.

No still cannot take video or pictures in game. Restart does not help.

See my edit above about the AV, @DezzyBoo

Are the files actually present in your main folder (neighbourhood storytelling folder)?

Ok, so do I just save the Sims 2 folder? I mean whatever folder I name Sims 2 will be what is made in the exception, right? Since I run 4 folders...

And the third pic is all my hoods in my main folder. All but N055 have their pictures. But none of them load in game.

Yes, if you just add Sims 2 folder then whichever one you are playing will not be scanned.

Do all of those folders in the second image (except for N055) have the XML files and also thumbnail images? Is N055 an important hood- did you have a story for it? Are there any files in the storytelling folder for that one at all?

N055 has XMLs just no pictures (except like 4) or thumbnails. Uh, I'm not sure what hood it is lol but it could be my newer one, which would make sense.

Is putting all these in okay, or no?

Yes, that should work.

If you right click on one of the webentry xml files in Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods, can you show an image of the file properties in the same way as you did in post #31? I need the xml and JPG files themselves, not the folders they are in.

@simsample Here you go