I installed the trial version of VF2 yesterday, and bought it after playing awhile. This morning, upon opening it, the game wasn't there. I remembered that after closing the game last night, there was a pop-up that said it might not have installed correctly, and asked me if I wanted to reinstall it with recommended settings, and I said no, it installed correctly. Upon running the installer again, the saved game was restored, but upon exiting and reentering it's gone again.
I have no idea what's going on. Help?
EDIT: Upon experimentation, I have found that my savegame is only there when I open the game directly from the installer. Changes are saved to the game. It's playable, but I'd like to not have to reinstall the game every time I want to play.

Additional note: The game is installed on a desktop PC with Windows 7.

Can anyone answer the above question? TIA

Txmom2, where did you buy the game?

You may want to backup your savegame files (if possible) just in case. Note that some websites do not allow access to these files due to the way the game is packaged.

NOTE: This procedure assumes that you are familiar with creating folders and copying files on your computer. If you are uncomfortable with such tasks, you should seek assistance from an experienced person in order to avoid the possibility of irreparable damage to your game or your computer files.

1) Pause each of the games in active player slots to prevent the passage of time in the game.
2) Quit the game
3) Open the folder that contains the savegame files. The savegame files for Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House for Windows can be found in \My Documents\LDW\Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House (if you purchased the game from us). If you didn't, look for the name of the website where you purchased the game instead of "LDW". The files are named Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House*.ldw, where * is a number corresponding to the player slot. There is also a backup savegame file for each game slot, which are named Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House21.ldw through Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House25.ldw.
4) Select all of the savegame files in that folder. Do not attempt to open the actual savegame files to prevent the possibility of corrupting them.
5) Copy the files to another folder of your choosing.

If you later want to restore those files to your game, navigate to the folder where you stored them, select them all and copy them back into \My Documents\LDW\Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House. Note that this will replace the files that are currently being used by the game with the ones you are restoring. If you don't want to overwrite the existing files that the game is using, you should move them elsewhere or back them up prior to restoring the files that you copied earlier.

You could try to delete and re-install the game after that, to see if that resolves the problem.

I bought it here at LDW.
I can't backup the files. The savegame file doesn't exist in the folder it should. I can't find it at all.

And you downloaded the trial and full versions from us, correct? (Sorry for the question, but we need to eliminate the possibility that any other version could be causing this! )

The trial was downloaded directly from LDW, the full version from the link provided in the e-mail sent after purchase, yes.

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.

Only the wc.dat and Virtual Families 20.ldw are in the VF2 folder in Documents.

There are no Compatibility Files in either location.

The Target and Start fields for the icon (which doesn't bring up the savegame) lead to the VF2 folder in Program Files(x86). The fields for the installer lead to Downloads.

A search brings up only the aforementioned files present in the VF2 folder, the folder itself, my VF1 backups (savegames and ldwLogs), the shortcuts for both games, and a few Word documents.

That is very strange. We haven't seen anything like that before. The savegame files must be on your computer, or the game couldn't find them when launched after installation.

One clue might be to watch carefully during installation to see if you can catch a clue to the locations that are being used during the install process. You might also want to see if there is a Compatibility Files button in Documents or the LDW folder or the Virtual Families folder.

It appears to be installing to Program Files(x86). (The "destination folder" is listed as C:\Program Files (x86)\Virtual Families 2\) While it's actually installing, it goes by too quickly for me to read any file locations that might be listed.

(I thought to run a search in the extra hard drive on my computer, but it didn't find the file.)