Thanks..Let me tell you what happened..At age 57 the lady died with no children(i am using the computer).Then a marriage proposal came for another 57 yr woman who also wanted children, so I adopted her...The man died within a hour of the marriage leaving her..then the game said I had to start over..so i lost $900 million dollars and I still had not collected all the pieces for the game..I was so hurt,because I thought that the system would have given me the option to adopt a child..It did not..So i have started over........I will take your advise about backing up a copy...Thank you very much..