Hi! I also have the same problem, upon upgrading to HELS, my save file no longer appears to be playable. I have Riverview installed also, so should I remove all the "things" that I downloaded from here?
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5207939/THE_SIMS_3_--_ALL_170___EA_STORE_ITEMS_(AS_OF_12.10.09). Do I just manually delete all of them in the Documents folder? Thank you very much for helping.
Also, my loading screen seems to be pretty messed up. Do you guys seem to know what's going on with that? Is it because I just downloaded TS3:HELS from the internet?