I can't explain why your game only finds the savegame files after running the installer. Something is not right, but I can't say what it is without more information. I can give you some things to look at that might help you, to see what we can find out.

The game is programmed to save your game files in one place, which is also the only place that it looks for savegame files each time it loads. So, the first thing to do is open the Documents folder and look for an LDW folder. Inside that folder you should see folders for each of the LDW games you have installed. You should see a Virtual Families 2 folder. If so, open it and look for the files wc.dat, Virtual Families 20.ldw, Virtual Families 21.ldw, and Virtual Families 221.ldw.

If either the folder or those files are not there, you'll need to find them on your computer, since Windows or your security software may have "meddled" with the installation process.

Here are a some things you can check that might provide a clue as to where the files might be:

- Open Program Files and look for a button called Compatibility Files, as shown in the screen capture image I've provided below. If it's there, click on it and see if any VF2 files are displayed. If not, open the Virtual Families 2 folder and again check for Compatibility Files. Let us know what you find.

- Right-click on the VF2 icon that you use to launch the game and click Properties in the context menu that appears. On the window that opens, click the Shortcut tab and look in both the Target and Start In fields and let us know what's in those fields.

- You could also search your computer for anything that has Virtual Families 2 in the file name, to see if you can find them that way.