Sims 3 - tips for saving corrupted saves (including error 12)

[Elf Prince]

Very useful quide

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by J.T.

Hello simmers,

Many of us have experienced a common problem: corrupted saves (which may lead to crashing and so on). This is the most dreaded of all and there are nearly no solutions for fixing this. Luckily, there are some tips for you to save the corrupted saves (if you don't know how to apply the mods shown below, visit http://www.games4the...ckage_files.pdf):

(1) Download Porter from www.nraas.wikispaces.com and apply it. Follow the following instructions:
1. Pause the game during Live Mode.
2. Click on the map tag or the roof of an occupied lot, and use the "NRaas \ Porter \ Pack" interaction
3. Specify the households and sims you wish to pack.
4. Name your Porter family and save it
5. Return to the Main Menu and start a new town
6. Select an existing household to initially play (it must be an existing family)
7. Pause the game and locate an empty house
8. Click on the map tag or the roof of the unoccupied lot, and use the "NRaas \ Porter \ Unpack" interaction
9. From the listing select your Porter family
10. Wait.
11. Go to Edit Town and switch to the household that you have just unpacked.
Note: After using "Pack": Do not enter "Edit Town" without first unpausing. If you do not unpause, the "Return To Game" button may be missing from the "Edit Town" window.

(2) Go to Edit Town and click on the household you are playing. Afterwards, choose "Save the household to library". You can either save the house along with the household or just the household. And then you can start a new save with the same household without losing all the progresses with your households.

If you are constantly receiving crashing (or Error 12) from these corrupted saves, you can either

(3) Download Traveler from www.nraas.wikispaces.com and apply it. Teleport your sims to another town with this mod.

(4)  If your pc is 32-bit and has more than 3 GB RAM installed, allow your pc to allocate more memory. Type "Dixdiag" and hit "Enter" when you open up the Start Menu. The value after the line "Memory" is your pc's RAM. If you have more than 3000MB RAM. Allowing more RAM to be used by The Sims 3 by running "cmd" (command prompt) as Administrator.
When cmd pops up, try the following:
If you have 3072 MB of RAM installed, type bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 2560 and hit "Enter".
If you have 4096 MB of RAM installed, type bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072 and hit "Enter".
After that, restart your computer.

(5) Save your save-file as a new game (so you have a backup in case something goes wrong). Load the TravelDB.package in C:\Users\(your computer name)\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves\_.sims3 using S3PE. Select all the _IMG files within the package and delete them. Save the TravelDB.package.

(6) You can also alter your saves in this way to prevent crashing and Error 12:
1. Save your save-file as a new game (so you have a backup in case something goes wrong).
2. Load the NHD file using S3PE
3. Select all the SNAPfiles within the package and delete them: At the bottom make sure the boxes for Display Names and Tags are checked. Also at the bottom, fill in "SNAP" in the Tag field (without the quotes)
4. Press the Set button, you'll see the SNAP field gets copied into the box below it
5. Tick "Filter Active". S3PE now only shows you SNAP resources
6. Highlight any of the resources and press Ctrl+A
7. Wait (patiently, depending on your system and the number of SNAPs) until S3PE highlights ALL the SNAPs
8. Press the Delete button on your keyboard
9. Save the NHD file.

Other solutions that might help:
(7) Open the folder C:\Users\(your computer name)\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves. Delete any folders that are ended with ".sims3.bad".

( 8 ) You can also replace the corrupted save with a backup save by renaming the folder (name of the save).sims3.backup associated with your corrupted save to (name of your save).sims3. Delete the corrupted save that ends with .sims3 before doing so. You will lose some of the progresses.