I HAD completed puzzles 1 - 9 and was waiting for a few things to happen for the other three.

The game crashed - the same shadow window crash I've reported before, and when I went back in, my master *"&£(!" was sick - I don't want to lose him, so I dragged a doctor over - and promptly lost them both.

I don't use any backup software, but luckily I had hot-synced this morning, so I took a copy of the PDB file on the PC. I then uninstalled and reinstalled the game and re-registered it on my Tungsten C.

So, the big question is, how to I get back to the file I had this morning. Please - this is my first game at anything other than Easy, and I really, REALLY don't want to start again.

Since you use HotSync, the easiest thing to do is to double-click on the savegame file that you backed up, and then perform another HotSync. Voila! It will be installed in the right place, ready to continue!

Thank you, thank you, thank you - after 102 hours, blood (theirs), sweat (theirs) and tears (mine) I didn't want to start again! I even got two masters back - and if they get sick, I'll just have to give the doctors a good talking-to, a la Tibby

Or you could read some of Tibby's stories to them - that will straighten them up!!

A good practice to get into is pausing the game before performing a hot sync! This way if something happens you can easily go back to that point. If you don’t pause the game and the saved game you want to go back was backed up 6 or more hours ago, you can lose some villagers. It is like you left the game on over night.

So get in a habit of pausing your game before you do a hotsync!

JMTCW

That's the advice I give people, too, Warren! It's a great way to recover from vanishing villagers or other 'bad' happenings in your game. Like I always say, save early, save often!!

An alternative (if you don't mind messing with your system clock) is to check the date/time of your savegame file and set your clock to match! Since this was a rescue mission for a recent catastrophe, none of that was necessary!