There is a procedure for backing up and recovering savegame files for Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children (Windows) in this post in the Guide Section for the game.

Actually, LadyCFII, I had already figured those were the game files, and had already backed them up... I was wondering if I had saved the right files or not, so I'm glad I know now. However, now that you post that, I realize that I had missed one crucial step - I didn't pause the game. So those backups, if I restored them at a later date, would fast-forward drastically in time! Thanks to you, I just created a new backup, done properly.

Please forgive me for feeling like this right now, but why on earth would I back up a game that the villagers do nothing but die. I am on my 12th tribe. :-(

Wow sorry to hear that, ABS. You may want to read through the forums & see if a different strategy might work for your villages.

you could try going into options and choosing a lower difficulty.

Is there a way to recover the village i have in v.97 to v1.00? I did the steps detailed above but no luck. The game always asks for a new player/village name on starting even after saving the game files.

V.97 is incompatible with v1.00 and the game won't recognize earlier version savegames.

Thank you, I had to learn the hard way but now am backing up my game. No more lost villages, sigh.

Thankyou for this info

I re installed xP today

although my game/games were still on my pc many had reset them selves to the begining and I even had to request the activation code for VV2, and a few other games

but I had a back up of my file thanks to this post

If you're on a Mac, the save files (*.ldw) are located under:

~/Library/Preferences/LDW/Virtual Villagers - The
Lost Children/

(The ~ is a tilde, indicating your home folder, whatever name you gave yours. Mine would probably be "neruda/Library/Preferences/LDW/Virtual Villagers - The Lost Children/" for example.)