More Awesome Than You!

I opened SimPE, then my hood with the hood browser, selected all the sim descriptions, created a description, saved it, closed the 'hood, closed SimPE. After playing around with the database I reopened SimPE and every character was unknown. I tried again, same result. I opened the game and all my lots were unoccupied and simbin was empty.
I am more bewildered than distraught, they are only sims and the average lot playtime was no more than a couple of sim weeks and it's a non-Maxis premade hood but I have a question.
How did this happen?

I'm not sure why it happened other than Murphy blessing you.

You know in the Neighborhood Browser where it says "Backup"?  Did you do that?  If so, you can get your 'hood back.  If not, sorry.

It sounds like a SimPE problem I had once. You can still edit using SimPE and everything will work OK (although it's dueced difficult with no listing of who's who).

It was solved for me by upgrading SimPE, so maybe if you did that, or uninstalled reinstalled if you already have the latest version.

I have the OFB version of SimPE (0.58 I think) and up to NL of the game so I shouldn't need to upgrade.
When I went into the game there were no sims in the hood, just lots of empty houses where there had been about 15 families plus a few in the simbin.
I have since done irreversible things to the hood, I am puzzled because I didn't alter or save anything in that session.

I am confused about what you did.

Originally I opened SimPE to create a description for use in Sims2DB and closed it without making any changes. I re-opened to check a few details and discovered all the sims in that 'hood were unknown which they had not been a few minutes before.

SimPE insisted on reading all my sims and neighborhoods as unknowns. Very frustrating and is why I never did learn to use the thing. It didn't mean there was anything wrong with my game though - the game is fine. SimPE is borked somehow... probably because it was installed on the main user account and my sims are on a differenter one.

Try this:

http://216.32.95.40/wiki/SimPE and scroll down to "Why are some sims listed as Unknowns?"

I don't know if this would help, but anyway: I play Sims on a Mac, and use SimPE on a PC, networked. If I open hoods directly (through the network sharing), all SDSC are Unknown. I have to work on a local copy on C:, to have the hood display properly in SimPE.

I think if you open the 'hood through the Neighborhood Browser, the Sims come up correctly.  If you open the Neighborhood file directly, you get a large assortment of Unknowns.

I've never had this problem before and just a couple of minutes before I had created a description, which I still have. I have done everything Sim-related on the same machine under the same login. Maybe SimPE just decided it was time.