weird issue

crusadecat · 04-13-2026, 08:34 PM

I hope i can explain this correctly. I'm in year 54 of a fictional league , many i have renamed in editor. I imported data from ootp 26 and i'm 80 games into the new season. everything was as going smooth. I played last night and saved the game as usual. When i went to play the game tonight, Names were changed, there were several called J.Unknown. players that were never on the team are on the team. Some players have stayed the same. The team records and stats screen all look correct. What on Earth has happened?

LansdowneSt · 04-13-2026, 10:51 PM

Before you do anything find the instructions for getting the auto-save dat files and see if you restore the corrupted save. Check the wiki or forum via the search function for past instances- most often a corrupted save says you are using a previous version of OOTP so check the wiki or the FAQ that is sticky and see if the steps are there.

Lukas Berger · 04-14-2026, 03:51 AM

As LansdowneSt mentions, this sounds like a corrupt save.

You can typically restore a corrupt save from the autosave function.

1) Open the game and on the start screen, click on Settings.
2) Now click on the tab "Troubleshooting".
3) Click "Open folder containing saved games".
4) Now open up the league folder you're wanting to restore.
5) Then select all of the .dat files in the folder and back them up (just in case) by copying them to a temporary folder or creating a zipped file with them
6) Open the folder called "auto-save".
7) In there, select all of the ".dat" files and copy them to the league folder (the parent of the current folder) overwriting all of the ".dat" files in the league folder.
8) Now start the game and load your league.

Many times, this can just be a one-off and once you restore the save, things will be fine.

If you're having league files regularly corrupting though, there may be another issue that's causing that though that it would be worth checking out.

There are a few things that can cause corruption. This potentially includes unexpected system shutdowns or crashes especially while a league is saving, bad sectors on the hard drive the game is saved to, memory glitches on your computer (especially possible if the league is left open for very long periods of time without the game being shut down or restarted) or interference from other programs, especially disk cleaners or anti-virus programs.

Some of what you might do to prevent that from coming up again would be to regularly defrag your hard drive as well as check it for errors, don't leave OOTP open and running with a league loaded overnight or for long periods when you are not actually using the game, make sure to shut your computer off or at least restart it occasionally and also run as few other programs in the background at the same time as OOTP as possible. For programs that need to be running at the same time, like an anti-virus or firewall, it's a good idea to add OOTP to their whitelist and to create an exception for OOTP's directories if you use some sort of automated disk cleaner.

crusadecat · 04-14-2026, 11:41 AM

i appreciate the assistance and can't wait to try these. I appreciate the advice about defrag and not leaving the game open too long. ( I have been known to do that and i believe that was the case the day before yesterday !)

04-13-2026, 08:34 PM	#1
crusadecat All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 830	weird issue I hope i can explain this correctly. I'm in year 54 of a fictional league , many i have renamed in editor. I imported data from ootp 26 and i'm 80 games into the new season. everything was as going smooth. I played last night and saved the game as usual. When i went to play the game tonight, Names were changed, there were several called J.Unknown. players that were never on the team are on the team. Some players have stayed the same. The team records and stats screen all look correct. What on Earth has happened?

04-13-2026, 10:51 PM	#2
LansdowneSt Global Moderator Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: From Duxbury, Mass residing Baltimore Posts: 8,105	Before you do anything find the instructions for getting the auto-save dat files and see if you restore the corrupted save. Check the wiki or forum via the search function for past instances- most often a corrupted save says you are using a previous version of OOTP so check the wiki or the FAQ that is sticky and see if the steps are there. __________________ Complete Universe Facegen Pack 2.0 (mine included) https://www.mediafire.com/file_premi...k_2.0.zip/file Just my Facegen Pack: https://www.mediafire.com/file_premi..._Pack.zip/file

04-14-2026, 03:51 AM	#3
Lukas Berger OOTP Developments Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Nice, Côte d'Azur, France Posts: 22,199	As LansdowneSt mentions, this sounds like a corrupt save. You can typically restore a corrupt save from the autosave function. 1) Open the game and on the start screen, click on Settings. 2) Now click on the tab "Troubleshooting". 3) Click "Open folder containing saved games". 4) Now open up the league folder you're wanting to restore. 5) Then select all of the .dat files in the folder and back them up (just in case) by copying them to a temporary folder or creating a zipped file with them 6) Open the folder called "auto-save". 7) In there, select all of the ".dat" files and copy them to the league folder (the parent of the current folder) overwriting all of the ".dat" files in the league folder. 8) Now start the game and load your league. Many times, this can just be a one-off and once you restore the save, things will be fine. If you're having league files regularly corrupting though, there may be another issue that's causing that though that it would be worth checking out. There are a few things that can cause corruption. This potentially includes unexpected system shutdowns or crashes especially while a league is saving, bad sectors on the hard drive the game is saved to, memory glitches on your computer (especially possible if the league is left open for very long periods of time without the game being shut down or restarted) or interference from other programs, especially disk cleaners or anti-virus programs. Some of what you might do to prevent that from coming up again would be to regularly defrag your hard drive as well as check it for errors, don't leave OOTP open and running with a league loaded overnight or for long periods when you are not actually using the game, make sure to shut your computer off or at least restart it occasionally and also run as few other programs in the background at the same time as OOTP as possible. For programs that need to be running at the same time, like an anti-virus or firewall, it's a good idea to add OOTP to their whitelist and to create an exception for OOTP's directories if you use some sort of automated disk cleaner. __________________ lukas@ootpdevelopments.com Buy Out of the Park Baseball 27! Need to upload files for us to check out? Instructions can be found here

04-14-2026, 11:41 AM	#4
crusadecat All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 830	i appreciate the assistance and can't wait to try these. I appreciate the advice about defrag and not leaving the game open too long. ( I have been known to do that and i believe that was the case the day before yesterday !)