Lost saved games after reinstallation

[MasterDave]

I do not know if anyone else has experienced this, or has a solution, but its worth a try. My old computer recently died and I bought an entirely new rig with first generation components. Civ 4 is running great now on the new system, but despite reinstalling it on the new HDD, I am unable to find my previously saved games on my old HDD (the old HDD seems to be running fine otherwise). One reason I can think of is that the new computer is running Windows XP while the old one was Win 2000. Another possibility is that installing civ on any drive wipes clean the "My Games" directory where the old saves are stored.

I had a very fun game going when my old computer decided to give up the ghost. If anyone has any ideas how I can recover the file, they would be most appreciated.

[bonscott]

By default the saved games are in "My Games" which is in the My Documents folder which is typically stored in your user profile. Profiles on Win 2000 are in a different location then Win XP if I remember correctly. Under 2000 they were in C:\Windows\Profiles\{your profile name}\etc....
So check that location on your old hard drive.

On XP the profiles are in C:\Documents and Settings\{your profile name}\

Also you could just do a search on the old hard drive for ".Civ4SavedGame" files.

[Addled Platypus]

memory sticks work wonders

- or -

keep newer saves in a folder in your email client

[Datajack Franit]

saved files are automatically deleted when editing game files as well