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Space Pony
Original Poster
#1 Old 19th Sep 2022 at 3:45 PM Last edited by Airazor65 : 29th Sep 2022 at 3:16 AM.

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default How Do I Fix Broken Sims?
So, lately, I've noticed that some of my sims get borked. What I mean is, something happens to them so that they get broken, and when I load the neighborhood in SimPE, their thumbnail is now the placeholder Mr. Potatohead, which I've learned means if I try to load the household, the game will get stuck in an infinite loading loop. Because the sim is broken or their user files partially shredded. The first time this happened was after a crash (understandably), and I restored my backup, but I had to do it several times because the sim kept breaking. This seems to keep happening WITHOUT a crash now. I've got a borked married couple, and two borked cats. Anyway I can fix their damaged data without doing my backup, restore, repeat method? Yes, Dropbox is disabled.
Edit: Okay, so basically, these broken sims have missing or broken character files, according to SimPE. If anybody has any ideas, I would appreciate it!
Edit 2: Is anybody here a character data expert (as much as one can be without dissecting the game, that is)? Because I don't know what to do. Also, why is SimPE ALSO glitchy?
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 19th Sep 2022 at 10:19 PM
Have you made sure your anti virus can't read any of your sims 2 files? Make sure sims 2 is whitelisted. An antivirus can wreck havoc on sim character files.
Also make sure OneDrive or any automatic syncing program can't access your sims 2 files.

Have you been doing any of the VBT (Very Bad Things) like moving sims between hoods, binning occupied lots, deleting sims, deleting graves without nounlinkondelete or removing npc mods?

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Space Pony
Original Poster
#3 Old 20th Sep 2022 at 1:23 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
Have you made sure your anti virus can't read any of your sims 2 files? Make sure sims 2 is whitelisted. An antivirus can wreck havoc on sim character files.
Also make sure OneDrive or any automatic syncing program can't access your sims 2 files.

Have you been doing any of the VBT (Very Bad Things) like moving sims between hoods, binning occupied lots, deleting sims, deleting graves without nounlinkondelete or removing npc mods?

I have the game whitelisted, because Norton Security is very vicious. And my OneDrive can't access the game. I have MegaSync, but it doesn't seem to be messing with my game.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 20th Sep 2022 at 1:34 AM
OneDrive can always access your save files if you have it enabled, because they are in Documents. The only thing you can do with OneDrive is disable it.
Space Pony
Original Poster
#5 Old 20th Sep 2022 at 4:34 AM
Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
OneDrive can always access your save files if you have it enabled, because they are in Documents. The only thing you can do with OneDrive is disable it.

Sorry, I should have specified, I did actually disable OneDrive back when it was eating my Castaway Stories saves!
Space Pony
Original Poster
#6 Old 20th Sep 2022 at 4:36 AM
Which ever it is, the file syncing program is disabled. :/
Space Pony
Original Poster
#7 Old 21st Sep 2022 at 12:44 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
Have you made sure your anti virus can't read any of your sims 2 files? Make sure sims 2 is whitelisted. An antivirus can wreck havoc on sim character files.
Also make sure OneDrive or any automatic syncing program can't access your sims 2 files.

Have you been doing any of the VBT (Very Bad Things) like moving sims between hoods, binning occupied lots, deleting sims, deleting graves without nounlinkondelete or removing npc mods?

Also, I haven't done anything dangerous to my knowledge.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 21st Sep 2022 at 12:56 AM
How did you restore your backup?
Did you delete/remove the old files and then copy the entire folder from your backup? (that's the safest method)

Or did you let the copy of the backup folder (or the files) overwrite the old folder/files?
Overwriting folders and/or single files can and usually will cause major borkage, because the automatic process behind this doesn't always do what you think it does.

The sim files and lot files in each neighborhood folder are dependent of each other, so if you partially change out some of these but not all in one go, you'll get broken relationships, memories, sims living in the wrong houses, sims with the wrong gender (or other info), etc.
Space Pony
Original Poster
#9 Old 21st Sep 2022 at 1:38 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
How did you restore your backup?
Did you delete/remove the old files and then copy the entire folder from your backup? (that's the safest method)

Or did you let the copy of the backup folder (or the files) overwrite the old folder/files?
Overwriting folders and/or single files can and usually will cause major borkage, because the automatic process behind this doesn't always do what you think it does.

The sim files and lot files in each neighborhood folder are dependent of each other, so if you partially change out some of these but not all in one go, you'll get broken relationships, memories, sims living in the wrong houses, sims with the wrong gender (or other info), etc.

I used SimPE's neighborhood backup manager, which said it would remove the old files, I believe.
Mad Poster
#10 Old 21st Sep 2022 at 5:05 PM
Did you do any changes in SimPE before this happened?

It can be an idea to do manual backups before changing things in SimPE, in case anything goes wrong.
Space Pony
Original Poster
#11 Old 22nd Sep 2022 at 2:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
Did you do any changes in SimPE before this happened?

It can be an idea to do manual backups before changing things in SimPE, in case anything goes wrong.

I have before, but as far as I know, so far SimPE has been doing a decent job of backing things up, thought I do sometimes prefer to just do it myself. The backups made by SimPE so far aren't broken. I use them when things break. For example, if the game crashes while loading a household, I will restore a backup because it's highly likely I won't be able to get back in the house.

So... any idea on how to fix broken Sims? I was wondering if the hard way of bringing back dead sims can be loosely applied? Because they tend to have borked character files or missing data.
https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_g...ife#Using_SimPE
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