More Awesome Than You!

If someone were to want to uninstall their current installation and reinstall a new version (like go from reloaded to razor or the "retail" arr), where are files kept which are important for backing up? I mean, of course, the hood data, the sim data, and everything else that's important to me so I don't have to start my GD stories over again. :P

Any help would be welcome. I don't trust EAxis to make it easy by putting everything in one place this time.

I successfully ported my hoods over from Reloaded to retail by using the files saved in My Docs/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Saves. The game did reset my graphics settings/aging settings/fiddly things, but the house is running smoothly and I'm not missing any content.

My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3
You will want Saves, which is your played games and Saved Sims, which I believe are the ones in the bin or downloaded and installed. I went from Reloaded to Razor and just snagged those two and screen shots with seemingly nothing lost. If you have been downloading store stuff you may want to snag Downloads, where the Sims3pack files are kept for the Launcher, if you went that route. DCCache which appears to be the actual installed objects from the store. InstalledWorlds, which would hold Riverview if you installed it. Exports, which is Lots or Sims that you marked for "sharing". The custom Music folder, if you put any in there. I have yet to figure out what the Library folder holds, maybe it is supposed to be books your sim has written? Maybe I take the name too literally. I still do not know what some of those Cache files are that are floating around loose in the Sims 3 folder.

Or you can just tell it to keep your save games and config data. Yes, I know--the game starts running instead of uninstalling, and will continue to do so every time you quit. But if you go to the task manager and kill TS3.exe, then the game will uninstall properly and you'll still have all your saves and config settings.

Could Library be for custom recolored patterns? I have a couple of files in there, but my Sims haven't written any books. I'm looking for where the recolors I saved with style editor are to back those up, but am not seeing them. It's likely I'm just retarded, but if anyone knows what I need to back up for those please share the info.

I have no idea. I hadn't saved any patterns to use later so it didn't make any sense to me that I would have files of that type in there, and yet I have several files in there.

The Library folder holds the households you've made. These are the households you can see in the bottom right corner of the "edit neighborhood"-screen. It probably also holds custom lots you've saved too but I'm not 100% certain about that.

I'm not sure about the patterns but I think they're in "userPresets.package"-file in My Docs.

EDIT: Just checked it, custom lots are in the Library folder too and the patterns are stored in "userPresets.package".

maybe just back up the whole ea folder in docs and put back any file names you're missig, that's what i'm gonna do when my retail version turns up. Where are youuuuuu postman!

BlueSoup said in another thread that we don't need to keep the stuff in the Downloads folder.  But I wondered: if we ever reinstall our game, will we need those to reinstall store items with the Launcher?  Or will we just be able to use a backup of the Sims 3 folder?

After a Vista update killed my computer the other day, I had to reinstall all of my software.  In preparation, I backed up the Electronic Arts folder and moved it back after reinstalling the game, and everything was already there.

Oh, good.  Thanks! ;D

For the sake of being clear: I just updated from RELOADED to retail, just backing up the entire "Electronic Arts" folder in My Docs and everything is currently dandy. Sims, lots, pattern recolors and CC are all fine.

Well,I'm new here & I have a question ...
I really want to update my Reloaded ver to Retail ver .. is there any patch for it ?

Thanks so much :) !