My games are not saving can anyone help

when I shut the game off and then go back to play it all the player spaces are empty

It would help to know if you're a Windows or Mac user, but I'm going to assume Windows for now.

The game should automatically save your progress every 10 minutes, as well as each time you exit the game. The first thing to do is to determine if the savegame files are being created and updated properly. To do that, use the Windows Search function to search your computer for the savegame files. These files are named Virtual Families*.ldw, and there could be up to 11 of those files, depending upon how many player slots are active. If the files are found, the game has been saved at least once. Note the location of those files, since that information will be needed for cause 2), below. Next, determine if the files have been updated properly. Check the date and time of each savegame file in the search results window. You can hover the cursor over each file to see the date and time, or you can right-click a file and select Properties to display when the file was created, and when it was last modified and accessed.

These are the most common reasons for file creation/update problems:

1) Your hard drive could be filling up. To determine if that's that case, open My Computer and right-click on the icon for your hard drive. Select Properties from the bottom of the popup menu and check the amount of free space that's available. If there is little free space, you can use the Windows Disk Cleanup utility to gain additional free space. Simply click on the Disk Cleanup button next to the pie chart and carefully follow the tool's instructions.

2) The game is saving to a location other than the default location. If the savegame files that you found during the Windows search are not in the correct location, the game will not find them and will start a new game each time it is launched. Virtual Families must save the files in My Documents\LDW\Virtual Families. Each user account on a Windows computer has their own My Documents folder, so make sure that you are logged into the correct Windows user account.

3) The access permissions for the user are set in such a way that the game is unable to save its progress (for example, writes are not allowed to the default location where the games are to be saved). There will be no error messages in that case, but the games will not be saved. You can refer to Windows help for assistance with resolving this situation. Windows Vista users must be careful to correctly set up the game with appropriate permissions, since security is more strict in Windows Vista.

4) The savegame files have become read-only. This can happen under some circumstances, such as copying them to or from a flash drive. To determine if the savegame files are read-only, right-click on each of them and select Properties from the pop-up menu. The attributes of the files are shown at the bottom of the properties window. Make sure that the Read-only box is not checked. Check each file's attribute.

5) The Windows file system has become damaged or corrupted. To see if there is a problem with your hard drive's file system, open My Computer and right-click on the icon for your hard drive. Select Properties from the bottom of the popup menu. Click the Tools tab and click the "Check now..." button in the Error-checking box.