I have lost all motivation

Coming to the end of 24 seasons with Dover Athletic. This is the longest game I have ever played, beating my previous record of 14 seasons on CM2... we are a world superpower, ranked no. 1 in Europe, 23 out of my 25 first teamers are club-trained, and more young prospects on the way from the Dover production line. And then...

... out of nowhere the game crashes. No matter what I cannot get past 3rd May 2033; just keeps crashing at that point. I suppose I wouldn't have known when to end that game... just let this end it for me.

Have you tried holidaying past it? You must be seriously annoyed, I feel for you mate.

If you holiday past that date you should be fine. This happened to me once too.

Yeah I already tried it... holiday, resign, retire... no go.

Do you use Steam by any chance?

No, was a standalone installation from disc.

If you have no backups the chance of getting past this is probably pretty small. I'd suggest installing the latest patch (if you haven't already) and unticking 'Enable Data Collection' in Preferences (pretty sure this won't fix it, but it's worth a try). Also, once in game, go through all your news items and make sure you've read them all and responded to ones you can respond to.

This happened to me, I was in 2021 and it was my longest save ever.

Took me 6 months to to get another save going as good.

How did you have such get your youth system to produce such fantastic talents?

Have you possibly tried using version 2 of your save and seeing if that gets you past it? (if you use rolling autosave obviously)

maby its just your computer

yes could be the computer??? the game will only run while theres enough space to store data so if you have loads of leagues open and/or got an older computer then it will crash sooner.

it is a shame if you have to finish it, took me 3 months to start again after i lost my weymouth save. gutted wasnt the word

How did you have such get your youth system to produce such fantastic talents?

Started a few years after I made it into the EPL. We were still bleeding money, being from BSS, and I decided to embark on a 3 year plan of signing only youth players. I concentrated on scouting the youth leagues and went all out to not spend more than was necessary to procure players for the youth squad. I just kept on doing it, signing several good 16 and 17 yr olds that I find (only those with potential rated at least 3*). It's been maybe 14 seasons now doing that and I have a systematic way of handling the players. I try as best as I can to loan them out every year. At 23 years of age it is crunchtime. I have to decide at that point whether I will draft him into the first team or sell him. Of course there are those good enough to make it before that age, or for whom I get an offer good enough.

2 things: i) Average looking players can produce good ratings. ii) Players can be played into form (if they are any good at all) Of course I found these out by necessity.

My squad avg age is 22.

This happened to me, I was in 2021 and it was my longest save ever.

Took me 6 months to to get another save going as good.

Yup. Will leave it for a while and try again... possibly my next game will be in FM11.

maby its just your computer

I have 2 other saves from a while ago. Those work fine though.

If you upload your game you could try and let people see if they can get past that date to see if the problem is in the save file or the game or the computer. Don't know if this can happen but sometimes anti-virus can stop a game from doing certain things try disabling that and trying to move on (make sure you put it back on if you try it.)

Another method that may or may not work, but worth a shot:

If you're using Windows 7 (or maybe they have this in vista too? I'm not sure), find the save game in your directory, then right click and go to properties, and click on the "previous versions" tab. There should be a list of previous versions of that particular save, hopefully it's more recent than your other two. Perhaps you can retry that save from there?

Hope it helps.

I've passed the savefile to a friend... will see if he can get it going.

I... hehe... funny to say this at times, but I don't have an anti-virus. I'm not ignorant, having been in IT service before for years, but sometimes I think it's more trouble than it's worth. The rationale for me really is I don't install one because I'm not afraid to format. I do proper backups for things I need, and do a reinstall of Windows on average every 12 - 18 months. Although so far I have to say Win7 seems a hell of a lot better. May not have to reinstall it that often.

Am on Win7 and I'm aware of that "previous versions" function... Thing is, I've tried it before, months ago, incidentally on the FM savefile . I save weekly and it did NOT bring me back to the save one game-week before as I was hoping. Instead it changed the file to one saved like a season ago, which I already have another save of. Probably won't be trying that again. Can't remember why I tried it... possibly there was something I forgot to do and realised it when the transfer window shut.

Absolutely gutting. I hope you can get it sorted out.

SOLUTION! :D:D YAY YAY YAY!

Don't know why... a friend joined in for a while through a network game. He hasn't been playing for a while, and there's been no unusual problems. Turns out I just had to go in as him and retire him, and the game progressed like normal. WOOHOO! I am back!

My "son" in the game has developed well too... my child... that would have been the hardest to give up.

SOLUTION! :D:D YAY YAY YAY!

Don't know why... a friend joined in for a while through a network game. He hasn't been playing for a while, and there's been no unusual problems. Turns out I just had to go in as him and retire him, and the game progressed like normal. WOOHOO! I am back!

My "son" in the game has developed well too... my child... that would have been the hardest to give up.

Glad to hear you got it back up especially when you had a son who turned out decent, most peoples seem to turn out rather poor.

A similar thing happend to me a few months ago. i accidentally wiped my save when i was in 2026/27 and couldnt get it back. I didnt even have a save for a few seasons before as i didnt use the rolling auto save at the time. I had to restart all over again, i was very annoyed at myself.

Well he's not world class... just "useable". Happy enough with that.

It's a weird feeling when that happens, like you feel at a real loss as to what to do. You slump back into your chair and think "what now?". It sucks. I developed this habit of saving regularly from I think FM09 (which crashed quite a bit too much. or it may have been FM07, can't remember). Now I've activated the Weekly 10-file rolling autosave.

You got a son?

How come everyone gets a son apart from me?

You got a son?

How come everyone gets a son apart from me?

its okay your not alone here

Congrats in finding your save back mate (hopefully SI will see this so they can maybe fix this bug).

Regarding your son. Was your starting reputation a former international footballer ?

My Previous Experience was "Semi-professional footballer". I believe I "randomed" it if I remember correctly.

I've passed the savefile to a friend... will see if he can get it going.

I... hehe... funny to say this at times, but I don't have an anti-virus. I'm not ignorant, having been in IT service before for years, but sometimes I think it's more trouble than it's worth. The rationale for me really is I don't install one because I'm not afraid to format. I do proper backups for things I need, and do a reinstall of Windows on average every 12 - 18 months. Although so far I have to say Win7 seems a hell of a lot better. May not have to reinstall it that often.

Am on Win7 and I'm aware of that "previous versions" function... Thing is, I've tried it before, months ago, incidentally on the FM savefile . I save weekly and it did NOT bring me back to the save one game-week before as I was hoping. Instead it changed the file to one saved like a season ago, which I already have another save of. Probably won't be trying that again. Can't remember why I tried it... possibly there was something I forgot to do and realised it when the transfer window shut.

Same mate - I work with MS/Citrix and I've actually fallen in Love with Win7 after avoiding Vista like the plague.

What size is the save file? I'd highly doubt this is causing the issue but it's worth cehcking. Also clearly isn't a virus issue. What Nikelvin said might be worth trying even if you have to replay the season. Could you maybe give this a shot and try holidaying up to the same point and see if it crashes this time?

Vista... as big a waste of time as Windows ME... remember that one? Thanks but the issue has happily been resolved! Post #18.