Dear LadyCFII,
Thank you for your response! I know many young people (and this game seems to have a fair share of younger players) or casual gamers are not well versed at this process of finding or backing up files. Perhaps the VV3 wishlist could include a save/restore game feature?

For the base note writer, if you would like to backup your files, your game save files can be found here:

C:\Documents and Settings\(WinXPUserNameHere)\My Documents\LDW\Virtual Villagers - The Lost Children

You can create a folder there called BACKUPS and copy and paste a copy of all the files into the backup folder. The naming scheme seems to be "Isola2X.ldw" where X is a number from 1 to 5 that signifies the number of the game slot you are using (from the "change user" screen in VV2).

I hope that is correct. (If not perhaps one of the Gurus can correct me - I am new here!)

Best of Luck!