Entire Sims and lots missing after crash

[Larxene]

I think I finally blew up my game. I had moved several lots into the bin as my Pleasentview was getting too populated for my graphics card to properly handle. I relocated some in the Downtown area - they're fine. The rest I decided to plop down in Bluewater. Aside from taking forever, the transplant went well and was finished when I decided to move an empty business lot from the bin into the neighborhood. Immediately, a massive lag occured followed by the BSoD and several errors about so and so not being a valid Windows image. I shut the game and computer down.

Today, coming back to Bluewater, I find all the lots I placed are gone. Not only that but they aren't in the lot bin, they aren't anywhere that I can find them. I also suddenly have six suburb files but only one suburb available ("Bluewater"). I haven't checked to see if the Sims lost are call/invitable. They still exist on family trees. I'm guessing their data must be somewhere.

I have all expansions - Free Time bug?

[danicast]

I had moved several lots into the bin as my Pleasentview was getting too populated for my graphics card to properly handle.

With sims living on those?
If the answer is yes, then, congratulations, you just exploded your hood. Never do that.

[Count Four]

Does BFBVFS really apply when you move occupied lots into subhoods of the same neighborhood?

Because that sounds like what Larxene may have done. I see no mention of moving lots into an entirely different neighborhood.

[Kyna]

Lotbinning an occupied lot is a bad idea, so yes moving occupied lots to a subhood can damage your game. 

If you want to move a family and their lot to a subhood, use the longer, safer way.
- Package the lot while still occupied.
- Move the family out to the sim bin.
- Install the packaged lot using Clean Installer.  Only install the lot file, do not install anything else in the package.  You don't want the sims (they're in the sim bin) and you already have any CC that may be in the package.
- The furnished, unoccupied lot will now be in the lot bin.  You can place it in the subhood of your choice.
- The family can now move into the lot in the subhood.

[lechapeau]

I lost sims and lots a while back, I wouldn't move them between hoods but they had disappeared. I'd seen at TSR someone explain how to do this, they said their sims and lots went after installing an EP. I found it worked for me when I needed it, if you want to try it might help you.
Keep in mind that because you've moved occupied lots to the lot bin you've already duplicated the characters, and those extra's might have similar character file numbers (I don't know if they'd appear as a family though),  or complicate things in some other way. 

I do know it will mess up your hood eventually, so it will be a short term fix if it works. I don't know if it's 'awsome', approved of, or where the original information came from. It fixed my issue when trying to work something out in a testing game but I didn't play it longterm, it would be good to know if anyone thinks it's a bad thing though, I don't want to recommend anyone doing it again if it's potentially dangerous! 

To make the family appear in your game, open the neighborhood in SimPE (Family Information on resource tree/name of the family) and change lot instance to "0x00000000" then commit/save as normal. This places the family in the sim bin. You'll probably have to adjust their funds to get the house back, I think mine were reset to the 20,000 they would have originally had. 

The lots are saved in the Lots folder inside the particular neighborhood folder. You have to go through the lots with Clean Installer and move the ones you know are 'lost' to a empty 'working' folder. The original lot will be called, for example, N001_Lot61.package, you need to change the name of each lot to "cx_xxxxxxxx.package" where the red x's are numbers. 
For mine, I removed the original main My Docs/EA Games/LotCatalog because mine was quite full already, that made the process easier. It didn't matter which numbers they were because when they're placed that changes their name again, so it didn't affect any similarly numbered lots in the 'real' LotCatalog folder which I replaced when I'd finished.
But if you don't want to do that, make a note of the last number you have in that main LotCatalog folder, for instance my last one currently is cx_00000193.package , so the new ones would be renmaed starting from cx_00000194.package onwards.
Once they are renamed, if you've moved you original LotCatalog somewhere while you do this, put them into a new folder called LotCatalog in My Docs/EA Games.
If you've taken into account the files that you already had in the original LotCatalog, just put them into that folder.
They'll then be in the lot bin, ready to place and move the families back into.

I'd say it happened because you shut the game down before it had saved the changes you made to the neighborhood, rather than because of any bug...

[jolrei]

Considering how well-known this VBT is, I always find it odd that EAxis never disabled the ability to lotbin occupied lots.  They might have at least made a warning pop-up (they make pop-up messages for all kinds of other rubbish) - "Warning - This could cause duplication and unlinking of your sims and seriously damage your neighborhood.  Do you wish to continue?"