Preventing holes in the region?

[TayTaytheBigGay 1]

Now, I love this game, and am a fan to the end, but I am just getting so frustrated with it-I've had 3 of my cities disappear and leave no trace, just holes in the region recently, and I wonder if anyone has any tips on preventing it, before my let's play of the game is ruined! This only happens when my city is saving, but doesn't respond, so I press the start menu button, then maximize the game again, and it's black-I have to move my cursor around until it turns into the little hand, and it returns to normal, but it's a lot like the cherry popper save glitch from GTA vice city, 2/3 of the time, it saves and is fine, but the other times, it acts like normal until I exit to region, in which there's just this great big hole in the view!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Now, I love this game, and am a fan to the end, but I am just getting so frustrated with it-I've had 3 of my cities disappear and leave no trace, just holes in the region recently, and I wonder if anyone has any tips on preventing it, before my let's play of the game is ruined! This only happens when my city is saving, but doesn't respond, so I press the start menu button, then maximize the game again, and it's black-I have to move my cursor around until it turns into the little hand, and it returns to normal, but it's a lot like the cherry popper save glitch from GTA vice city, 2/3 of the time, it saves and is fine, but the other times, it acts like normal until I exit to region, in which there's just this great big hole in the view!

Congratulations. Your anxiety has caused the saves to be corrupted. The most important thing during a save is to keep your hands off the human interface devices (mice, keyboards, bit-pads), and never, ever, switch context during a save even if you have said save and quit. The save process is very delicate and must be left to run to completion on its own. Cities lost in this manner are lost forever.

If your saves are hanging and do not complete then there is a problem with your installation. To discuss this further, you need to tell us more about your machine and your game.

Game: Version? (SimCity 4, Rush Hour, Deluxe), Build level? (Find this in C:\program files\maxis\SimCity 4 ...\Apps and hover over the SimCity 4.exe file)

Computer: CPU(s)?, GPU?, RAM?, Virtual Memory (swap file size)?

Operating System: (Windows? version? update?) or MAC (OS version) or Linux? If MAC are you running the Aspyr version?

[TayTaytheBigGay 1]

Yes, sorry-I'm dumb for not including the correct info!

Stats:

GAME VERSION: SIMCITY 4 DELUXE EDITION

BUILD LEVEL: 1.1.640.0

COMPUTER SPECIFICATIONS:

CPU: @ AMD ATHLON 64 X2 DUAL CORE 5600+ PROCESSORS

GPU: ATI RADEON x1700 SE

RAM: MODIFIED FROM 1.0 GB To 3.0 GB DIMM RAM

VIRTUAL MEMORY: 9000 MEGABYTES

OPERATING SYSTEM: MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA X86 SERVICE PACK 1

COMPUTER MODEL: HEWLETT-PACKARD M8000E

NOTES:

During install, the game kept saying it had a problem copying a file to the disk starting sometime around the beginning of the disk, now-as I installed it about a year ago, I don't remember the name of this file, but I can sure as hell tell you that I kept on with the installation, pressing ignore each time it came up, and, it progressed through the installation and works fine. (Installation error probably due to amount of scratches on 5-year-old disk.)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Thanks. Looks like your game is all in order and your machine is OK. We now come to the hard disk. If you didn't have problems during the saves of these cities, then only two things corrupt cities so that they don't appear in the region:

1. Switching context during a save, even a save and quit, before the save has finished. This is a known problem.
2. Old disk heading for death. If your disk is getting old, it is time to think about replacing it. If your disk uses S.M.A.R.T. it will tell you if it is in trouble if you access the appropriate disk utility.

The defense against this is to archive your regions on a regular basis to either another hard disk or to CD/DVD-RW storage. I spent a couple of hours this morning doing backups. I am so paranoid that i keep two copies of my backups, one on each of two off-line HDDs. I also operate my game from one of the free-standing HDDs by using links to the folders. I do this because I switch operating systems often and have the links on both systems. That means I can play the game without fuss on either one.

By the way, I had a drop out of a city on one of my backups that I used briefly. Fortunately it was an old archive, and today, I replaced it. All three copies of my SimCity 4 folders are now in sync.

[Wiimeiser 444]

I think SC4Terraformer can save the underlying terrain if it was one of the 167 Mayor Mode checksums that got corrupted. I managed to recover a bit of terrain this way.