My world is at an end

Woke up this morning, made a coffe, sat down, powered up the PC ....... WINDOWS WAS NOT SHUT DOWN PROPERLY ETC ETC ....... REALLY, well i shut it down properly, so someone else has been on here...hhmmm...nevermind....

launch football manager

load last game

THE SAVED GAME COULD NOT BE LOADED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh right, re-start, same again, uninstall, re-install - more problems, installing off the CD, once game is installed it wont run, pinned it too quick launch bar, problem solved, been up an hour now, kids due up soon......load game....

SAVED GAME CANNOT BE LOADED.....

i know its gone, i know it is......but i gotta ask....

HELP, ANYONE? PLEASE..................

Normally once its gone its gone. That's why I always keep some backups.

Hopefully someone has something that might be able to help you though.

Any problems with shutting down, will usually lead to a corrupted save, I'm afraid. Once you save the game, the saving process will continue, even after you have exited the game, so it is best to wait for about 30 seconds after exiting before shutting down the computer. If you don't have a recent back up ( and you really should have ) then I suspect that your save will be lost.

yup what Franz says its true i shut down my laptop the second the game had finished saving by pressing the power button and it corrupted my game luckily i only lost a few weeks.

Wonder if the previous versions thing would help at all.

Can't believe people don't do rolling saves.

Auto Save Mode

If however it is for you, you can choose whether the game automatically saves itself in a single file (therefore overwriting the same save) or if it saves itself into an incremented or rolling save file.

http://www.sega.com/fm11/manual/39

I create a new save every time I save the game, that way if I have a problem like the OP's or a crash-dump, I have the previous save to go back to. It's kind of like rolling saves but I do it manually.

I just do the rolling saves. Then I do a Save As before I accept another managerial role. Giving me the option to go back to that career if I wanted to.

I do rolling saves and I also copy them to a USB stick every week just in case something terrible happens to my laptop.

Ah I just save the file to my dropbox. Then I can play that game on any computer that I have dropbox installed.

Here's a link to an invite

http://db.tt/OhYYiLK

Plus I can go back into the archives of in Dropbox to retrieve older versions, so even a corruption of the file wouldn't be end of the world.

This happened to me a couple of weeks back. I even posted a highly emotional story about the whole fiasco on the forums, so great minds and all that... ;-) sorry for your loss, I know exactly what you're going through.

I just do the rolling saves. Then I do a Save As before I accept another managerial role. Giving me the option to go back to that career if I wanted to.

I burnt my bridges ALOT by forgetting this.. Sometimes I've had a 10+ season great game with some team.. take on another job and lose interest and then I remember that I dont have a backup game before switching jobs.. *GONK* (sound of me headbutting the desk)

Ah I just save the file to my dropbox. Then I can play that game on any computer that I have dropbox installed.

Here's a link to an invite

http://db.tt/OhYYiLK

Plus I can go back into the archives of in Dropbox to retrieve older versions, so even a corruption of the file wouldn't be end of the world.

This is why I'd like FM so support Steam Cloud.. It would be awesome for those of us that play on multiple computers!

It's happened to us all. You lose heart, take a break, then fire up the game and then off you go again. Before you know it your past save is old news...but your computer is now your arch enemy!!

I've done it before on some very very long term saves (2035 on CM01/02 once my last backup was 3 years before). But you really should be using the rolling save. I have mine to auto save once a fortnight so in times the game has gone wrong 2 weeks max is the time I have to go back.

I create a new save every time I save the game, that way if I have a problem like the OP's or a crash-dump, I have the previous save to go back to. It's kind of like rolling saves but I do it manually.

If you get a crash dump, the game automatically has a backup save for you, or atleast it did the last 4 times I got a crash dump with FM2011

I personally save religiously, not with the aim to cheat, but purely because I have a compulsive addiction to saving my game, I did it in first person shooters and rpgs too, and when I stopped playing any of those kind of games, I would start trying to press f5 to quicksave while playing world of warcraft, just out of my pure addiction to it, even though it doesn't work (obviously).

If you get a crash dump, the game automatically has a backup save for you, or atleast it did the last 4 times I got a crash dump with FM2011

What name do these saves have and where are they? I've not noticed an extra save in the My Documents>Sports Interactive>Football Manager 2011>games folder following either crash-dump on my Hereford save (although the recent one was caused by a Windows failure not an FM failure which maybe makes a difference?).

this happened to me but somehow FM made a backup copy for me and i tried loading that and it worked

That's called the Rolling Saves. It creates backups of the game.

What name do these saves have and where are they? I've not noticed an extra save in the My Documents>Sports Interactive>Football Manager 2011>games folder following either crash-dump on my Hereford save (although the recent one was caused by a Windows failure not an FM failure which maybe makes a difference?).

it will append the word '(backup)' to the name of your file, if my memory is correct. so if your file is called 'my team (backup)', it will save it as 'my team (backup) (backup)'

Any problems with shutting down, will usually lead to a corrupted save, I'm afraid. Once you save the game, the saving process will continue, even after you have exited the game, so it is best to wait for about 30 seconds after exiting before shutting down the computer. If you don't have a recent back up ( and you really should have ) then I suspect that your save will be lost.

it continues saving after you've exited the game? thats crazy, surely? i have noticed that the game takes a long time to exit when i click to get out of the game but i didn't think it was still doing critical work.

Does it have anything to do with data collection?

That's called the Rolling Saves. It creates backups of the game.

i don't know if you're replying to me but i don't have my saves set to rolling saves

Same thing happened to me when i went n looked in the save folder (out of FM) it had made a backup which worked....... i take it you've already looked in there...?

Right. Well. It appears that I don't have these "(backup)" saves so I can only assume that it is something to do with my "autosave" settings... I thought it was set to every year but I may have actually turned it off because you can't not auto-save it on 24th June, I prefer to have more control over it. Either way, I don't have the (backup) save at all, just my last one. And that, unfortunately, means going back up to 14 matches this time around after a corrupt Windows file killed my game. I actually think I'd played 13 matches or the 13th was next, and no I'm not superstitious, just annoyed a tad..

In any case, it's lead to me starting a Barca save to test my experimental Barca tactic and, so far, it's looking pretty good

Right. Well. It appears that I don't have these "(backup)" saves so I can only assume that it is something to do with my "autosave" settings... I thought it was set to every year but I may have actually turned it off because you can't not auto-save it on 24th June, I prefer to have more control over it. Either way, I don't have the (backup) save at all, just my last one. And that, unfortunately, means going back up to 14 matches this time around after a corrupt Windows file killed my game. I actually think I'd played 13 matches or the 13th was next, and no I'm not superstitious, just annoyed a tad..

In any case, it's lead to me starting a Barca save to test my experimental Barca tactic and, so far, it's looking pretty good

It pays to be a save monkey. Don't play Spanish roulette.