Sims 2 crash- now I have 2 identical sims??

[Iconised Ghost]

I had a problem where my sim got into a cab to go to a community lot but the cab decided not to leave. This had happened before and fixed itself over time but this time my sim was getting really cold, so I used the move objects cheat, deleted the cab and saved the game. I came back into the game and my sim is back...but the game has made two identical copies of this one sim now. They are not twins, they have the same name, hair, clothes, wants etc. I tried to play with both of them in game to see what happened, and the game crashed lol. What do I do?

[Nalia]

Now you load a backup of your game before the time your Sim called the taxi.

[Iconised Ghost]

I didnt back up >.< Unless the game automatically makes backups that I havent found?

[Lili975]

The game backs up while you travel to a community lot, and then again while you travel to another community lot/home.

I think I read on MATY that you could just delete the clone provided they had not interacted with each other, but my knowledge is really too poor, here. Did you save after the clone appeared? Are there two of them each time you load the lot (WITHOUT SAVING after, of course)?

Edit: sorry, Mootilda, saving is what I meant, not backing up. Thank you for correcting.

[Mootilda]

The game backs up while you travel to a community lot, and then again while you travel to another community lot/home.No, the game doesn't backup automatically. Instead, the game saves the lot automatically when you travel to a community lot. Saving is not the same thing as backing up. A backup must exist outside of the My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 folder.

The duplicate sim when you load the game is a very bad sign, indicating that your neighborhood is corrupt. The fact that the game crashes when you try to play is another indication of corruption. If you don't have a backup, there may be nothing that you can do to save your neighborhood.

You may be able to recreate the neighborhood, if you're willing to do a lot of work:

1) You can retrieve the neighborhood terrain, roads, trees, and decorations, using HoodReplace.

2) You can retrieve the unoccupied lots, although there is a possibility that the lot with the duplicate sim is corrupt. I have a technique documented in my Journal, which I can give you if you're interested.

3) You can extract your sims using SimPE, to be cloned in a new game. Here is an article which explains how to do this: Game_Help:Moving_Sims

[Iconised Ghost]

Thanks for all the input everyone, sorry its taken me so long to reply (life got in the way of playing the sims, I hate it when that happens). Well, in the end I used SimPE to try to delete the character, but I think I just deleted something else to do with them because they were still there when I started the game, so what I did was I got one of the duplicates to go to the phone and find a place for themselves to live, and they left off to the community bin or whatever. The remaining clone stayed and the game hasnt crashed since! So hopefully thats the end of it as long as I dont get confused and start trying to move the other one back in or anything.

Thanks again! Hopefully it doesnt mean my whole neighbourhood is corrupt :(