I have several old hoods that I no longer play, mostly because I was having Mac file limit issues, and all the Sims disappeared. Some of these hoods, I have removed from the in-game hood menu (although their respective folders still live in Sims 2/Neighborhoods. Those, I'd be happy to delete entirely. What is the proper and safe way to do this, to avoid nasty problems?

Others are similarly devoid of Sims, although they are near and dear to me, due to the time and love I poured into building them: for example, my Stranger Things hood of Hawkins, Indiana. That one in particular I would consider going back to at some point and re-creating all the Sims who used to live there. My file limit issues are now a thing of the past, but is this a good idea? This one is still present in my Hood selector menu, and when I visit, the town is still standing, in all its painstakingly modeled detail (including customized signs that I created for local businesses)... it's just spookily empty. I honestly would enjoy re-building the Sims for the hood: I have a ton more facial sliders now than I did the first time around. BUT - is this wise? Are those residential lots actually empty, or will there be all manner of "Sim DNA" sprinkled across those lots (apologies for the gross metaphor), left behind by the now-vanished families? I know that the avatars of the kids will be on their "homework desk" and "Myne door" photos. Is there the possibility that they might come back on their own, now that my file limit is taken care of? I'm guessing the answer is no, although presumably their info is still lurking on my hard drive, in the form of all those Character packages, right? Can I safely trash those files in the Characters folder, since they no longer belong to "living" Sims in those hoods? Or are those files linked to the lots where those Sims once lived? Would I be causing catastrophic problems if I rebuilt those Sims, and moved them into the lots where their previous incarnations once lived? I've certainly done this before, with no apparently dire consequences... but I just don't know that it's necessarily been wise, in the big picture.

My idea is to delete the neighborhoods I no longer care about, and move ones I want to keep into my Sims Cold Storage folder, until such time as I might want to re-populate them. Or should I just leave them where they are? I know, so many questions...

Well, you can delete entire neighborhoods straight to the recycler bin and it will not be an issue. Each neighborhood is entirely self-contained within the 00# folder.

If all the sims have vanished from these other old hoods, that has to mean something fundamental has gone wrong with the neighborhood. Have you looked in SimPE? If the character files are still there, then there may be a way to get them back without rebuilding them, but I wouldn't try that till I had some idea of what went wrong. If you want to play those lots and recreate the families, I would copy the lots, clean them with Clean Installer, and start a new hood; or maybe rebuild the lots if they're not too complicated.

I don't think you have to worry about lots being contaminated in some way just because there used to be sims living there. If all the sims disappeared due to the file limit and the file limit is no longer an issue, the sims are probably all still there, just in the default family with all of their data zeroed out. If you want to fix them with SimPE you can do that, if you create new ones instead they will just be hanging out in the default family unused.

Hmmm. I mean, I'm guessing that's why they disappeared. Good to know that it's safe to re-occupy those lots; however, I'm on an older Mac OS, so even the new SimPE for Mac isn't going to help me at the moment... I've downloaded it, but it's on a back burner until I figure out an OS upgrade. But my ears perked up when you said something about all the previous Sims possibly being in a sort of default family limbo. Is there any chance I could summon them onto a lot with the Blender's Teleport command? I only mention this because there are always townies who show up in the Teleport directory, who belong to the various Maxis families somehow (Ottomas and whatnot). And I think there's a Default family listed as well, but I can't exactly recall. I could create a Sim who could occupy the lot, and then move them out once I got the appropriate family moved back in... or doesn't it work like that? I'd have to do a lot of Sim-Blendering to get their family connections, etc. reset, but if it works, it works, right?

Yes, you can summon sims in the Default family with the Sim Blender, they will probably show up under "Summon Default". You may be able to fix their data with various mods, but I'm not sure if you'll be able to fix everything in-game.

Well, apparently there's more to it than just re-summoning lost Sims. Unless somewhere along the line I deleted the neighborhood folder, or just the Characters folder for that hood, or who knows what. The only things in the default family are like animated chickens and a skunk (no idea what that's about) and... well, look at the screenshot. Unless I need to be in testing cheat mode to see all the Blender options, but I kind of thought that was the point of the Blender. Anyhow, not a big deal; I've already rebuilt one family, so I'm happy.

You have to click "More..." to see all the other options.

Yeah, I did that. Depending on which lot I try it on, there are either two or three "pages" of options under Teleport>Summon>Default. They're mostly NPCs like remote control cars, the Therapist and Penguin, and also ghosts of Sims who actually died, as opposed to just vanished. No mysteriously absent Sims were included in the ones I could teleport back from the ether. I tried the various other "families"; no dice. The Maxis families had townies in them, as you'd expect.

Then the character files must have been deleted, or else you're still being affected by the file limit.

Yes, I think probably deleted, in one of my panic moments. It's been quite a while since I played that hood, so the chain of events has become blurred in my memory. I wasn't always as careful as I am now about backing up the Neighborhoods folder. At least I have a version from before all the lots disappeared - it was really creepy when that happened. I only have to re-build the Sims, and I have much better tools now to do it.