Deleted region by mistake! How to retrieve?

[danny30 1]

Well, I somehow managed to delete my region (new york) with 2 cities in it. I think I must have done it when using the CC Cleaner tool. I have since tried to go to the regions folder and restore previous versions but there are no previous versions showing up. Is there any other way to restore the city? I should have backed the city up, that was a big error on my part. Is there a way to use files from the simcity/programfiles84/maxis regions folder to restore my region (new york)?

[Asser 78]

If you're lucky the files are in the trash bin. Have you looked there? I can't remember if nyc is part of the pre-installed regions. If it is then there should be a /SimCity 4/regions/New York/ folder you can copy the missing cities from.

[danny30 1]

Unfortunately my recycle bin has been emptied. The new york region is the one that comes pre installed with the game, it is not a custom region. How would I go about copying the lost regions back? Not quite sure what and where to copy files from/to.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

This is a simple file system operation that requires two open windows:

 

1. C:\<you>\Documents\SimCity 4\Regions

2. C:\Program Files ...\SimCity 4\Regions

 

Right click in window 2 on the New York folder and choose copy

Right click on any blank space in window 1 and choose paste

 

All files will be copied from the source region to the target including the region folder.

 

Danny, you need to spend some time with the help files for the file system.  This is just about as elementary an operation as there is.

 

Note: You cannot use drag and drop here because both objects are on the same drive.  The result would be a move not a copy.

[Nesral Sredna 62]

Copy/move your regions and plugins to a safe location and reinstall the game, then put your own regions and plugins back again.

 

Lol, Nonny beat me within seconds...

[danny30 1]

Thanks, where can I find the help files on this topic? I also already have a file labeled new york in my plugin folder (option 1). Should I overwrite it? 

 

Edit: Both New York folders (option 1 & 2) contain 51 Files and are 21.8mb so I am assuming that they are both the same.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Click on help after opening windows explorer.  That is probably the fastest entry to this.  Your file system is called NTFS (new technology file system) and is no longer very new.  In fact, it has more frogs than a polluted pond.

[danny30 1]

Thanks Nonny, but if both my New York folders have the same amount of files and is the same size I assume that they must be identical, so would copying that folder make a difference? Should I copy over the whole regions folder instead of just the New York one?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I would examine the folders by opening them both (two windows) with windows explorer and see if they are, in fact, identical as to file names and file sizes.  If so, the just play the one in your C:\<you>\Documents folder.

 

When the game is installed or reinstalled or doesn't find the user area, it copies the default regions into the user area automatically.  This trick allows multiple users to play the game on the same machine without having to reinstall the game.  You see, unless otherwise specified, all the material in C:\Program Files ...  is global to all users registered on the machine.  You may not have realized this but most operating systems these days will support a nearly unlimited number of user accounts.  Many of them will support these users on remote devices as well, and thus operate as a time-sharing service.

[danny30 1]

The New York folders are identical however some of the other regions are not for some reason. Can I just copy and paste the regions folder to the my documents/sim city 4/ regions folder or would you recommend reinstalling the game? Sorry for all the questions.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You could just let the game do it.  Just delete the Regions folder from your user area then start the game.  It will reinstall the default regions.

[rsc204 21,857]

If you use a program like CC Cleaner, does this not make a backup of removed files somewhere, have you checked this, all may not be lost?

 

Assuming you don't have the old files, if there is a folder for New York in your My Documents\Regions folder then the files are already there, why would you need to delete or overwrite these again? Are you sure the files have actually been deleted, perhaps SC4 has already restored the region to the default, have you tried the New York region in-game and does it already work?

 

To explain a little about this, the game installs the default regions in two locations, one in Program Files (a backup of the originals, should not be modified at any time) and the user ones in My Documents which you use for playing/saving your cities.

 

There is an option to manually reset all the Maxis Regions from within the game itself: From the main Sim City region-view window, click the menu in the upper right and select Play Options (last one on right). In the window that appears click on Reset Tutorials.

 

If you copy a folder from the originals (in Program Files) to the user area (in My Documents) and overwrite it, you can restore just a single region, rather than resetting everything, I'd imagine this is preferable here.

 

Whatever you do, simply make a backup of your entire Regions folder in My Documents\Sim City 4\ before doing anything, that way you can recover any mistakes here.

[danny30 1]

Hi Nonny, I took your advice and deleted the regions from the my documents section. When I loaded up the game the city is still not there and I have checked and the Regions folder is showing up in the my documents folder again. I really don't know  what is happening, really do not want to lose the city after all the time I spent.

 

Hi RSC, I did a backup when I used CC Cleaner and when I Click on the back up file and click okay, it says that the keys and values in the folder has been successfully added to the registry, hasn't made a difference.

[rsc204 21,857]

It sounds to me like that backup you refer to is of Registry Files, that should not be related in any way to your SC4 save files.

 

You do realise the instructions given here are for a backup of the default New York (and other) Maxis regions, copying these files will NOT bring your cites back, it will only restore the regions to how they are when you first install the game. If there are differences in the files, those will be your changes, overwriting such files with the originals would mean all your work on the originally installed Maxis maps would be gone forever, be very careful with this.

 

Without any information it is hard to fathom what the problem is here, please confirm if you have a New York folder containing files in the My Documents\Regions folder, also if the New York region can be loaded from Sim City 4.

 

I really can't recommend enough that you take a copy of the Regions folder now before any other changes are made, such backups can be a lifesaver. Simply drag the regions folder onto the desktop (Holding CTRL on the keyboard) and let go of the mouse button, holding CTRL ensures you make a copy. Once that's done you can mess up the real folder as much as you like, but you'd always have the originals to recover from should you need them.

[danny30 1]

I have made a copy of my Regions folder on my desktop. I have the new york region in both plugin folders and when I load the game I have access to the new york region but my city has disappeared. Please tell me that there is a way to get my city back!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Danny, if you had a worked city tile in the New York region without a backup, I am sorry to say that what you did following my instructions was a regions reset and all previous work in ll regions is now gone.

 

Consider this to be an object lesson.  You should do regular backups of all your user files.  I have an automatic backup that does incrementals every Thursday at midnight.  Investigate your software.  You should find something similar, and can then just enable it.

 

Computers are not magic.  They only follow your instructions.  You must tell them what to do.

[danny30 1]

I did copy and paste the regions folder in my my documents/simcity/regionsfolder to my desktop before I followed your steps. Would a system restore work maybe?

 

Also looking at both my regions folder, I can still see multiple files with my Cities name on it. Should these not be gone if I have restored the original regions?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

To your second paragraph, yes.  But where are these files?  To be visible in the game they need to be in C:\<you>\Documents\SimCity 4\Regions

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Unfortunately, a System Restore would only recover system files and settings. It doesn't affect personal files or folders, so wouldn't be any help.
 
A few last-resort suggestions:

• If the "Regions" folder shows no previous versions, try searching from the drive (C:), the entire "SimCity 4" folder, or the "New York" folder. Occasionally, these checkpoints don't always show up in all folders. This can be done by right clicking and selecting Properties. If any versions show, then select Open and attempt to locate the region.

• Also make sure your network connection is enabled. For me at least, previous versions aren't shown without an active connection.

• If you still can't locate a previous version, it might be worth trying a file recovery tool. There are a few out there, such as Recuva (from Piriform, the makers of CCleaner). It works by searching the hard disk for areas that haven't been overwritten, and can be recovered. If you wish to pursue this, use the wizard to select the "Regions" folder. Enabling the deep scan mode will take longer, but may find more obscured results.

[danny30 1]

 Hi Guys, I managed to get my cities back. I looked through my sim city folders and found another version of my regions folder, this contained my cities on, so I copy and pasted the new york region into my documents/sim city main folder and I now have my cities back. I still don't quite understand what happened, how my regions folder ended up where it did, and how my cities got deleted in the first place. Thank you very much guys, I think I might just have given up on sim city if I couldn't get the cities back. Btw, what is the easiest and safest way to back up my cities? don't want to risk this happening again.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Backup depends on your machine.  There are automatic backup programs which you can acquire if your O/S doesn't have one.

 

The simplest thing would be to copy your entire C:\<you>\Documents\SimCity 4 folder to a thumb drive (a big one) once a week.  You should probably have two thumb drives and use them alternately.  If anything goes wrong, you just mount the thumb drive and selectively copy back anything you want restored.

 

I have both an automatic and a manual system.  Weekly, an automatic backup is made of my entire user space.  Once in a while, I copy my SC4 stuff out to one of my static external hard drives.

[TPB 563]

Note: You cannot use drag and drop here because both objects are on the same drive.  The result would be a move not a copy.

 

If you hold down CTRL while dragging it will do Copy instead of Move. And thank goodness for that! It has saved me a few thousand clicks I reckon.

 

-

 

Glad to hear you recovered your cities Danny!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You are right.  I haven't run windows in so long I forgot that.  One develops certain working habits.

[danny30 1]

Thanks again Nonny. Can I not just copy the regions folder? Also I have lots of City - New City (52).sc4  and SimCity Exception Minidump 2015.02.05 13.05.29.mdmp in my documents folder taking up a lot of space. Can I delete these? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Danny, you can clear out the Exception Reports folder anytime.  They are mostly el punko junko.

 

Copying the whole SimCity 4 folder gets your plugins as well as your regions.  The regions depend on the plugins.  Don't be chintzy on backup space, use good big thumb drives and you won't miss anything by accident.

[rsc204 21,857]

Usually you don't want to delete any files formated as follows "City - New City (##).sc4" where is a unique number, these are currently undeveloped city tiles, the name would change when you start the city and give it one. If you delete these you can screw up a region.

 

As for the dump/log files, you might have many of them, but I bet they are so tiny in the grand scheme of things that deleting them saves little more than the space of a floppy disk, which isn't worth messing with unless you really know what you are doing, I'd leave everything as is and be safe in the knowledge it will work.

[danny30 1]

Thanks for all the help guys. I swear, everywhere I go on my laptop I see Sim City documents and files. I will just leave them and try and move them to a separate folder to clean everything up. 

[rsc204 21,857]

They really should only be in two places, both the SimCity folder inside Program Files and the second inside your My Documents folder is all that the game itself is using. Could all these files be mod's you've downloaded that got scattered around?

 

I'd create a new folder, place everything not in the SimCity folders in there, if after a few weeks nothing seems missing, create a zip containing the contents of the folder, put this somewhere safe and delete all the scattered files.

[danny30 1]

Hi all, well I did say that I would be back. Now I am encountering yet another issue. This time when I go to load my region, my main city tile is totally blank however it is showing the population at 670,000 and all the other financial and job stats are still there. It is working and when I click and load the city however. Why would it not be showing on regions view?

[Toby Ferrian 875]

That happens when you switch to another window while your city is saving. From what I've read elsewhere on this site, there is a chance that it will corrupt your city. Stay on the SimCity 4 window while it's saving and it won't happen.