Sims
 

hey i had to reformat my hdd last night. so i burnt my sims dir to a dvd along with other stuff and it come up something like a new sims addon was found hotdate needs to update so it comes up with the sims hotdate setup screen and then says cannot find sims in the registry where or how can i stick the sims in the registry?

Why don't you use the original CD that you installed the game from?

my familys have become really good and had good jobs is there anyway just to rip that and i do a clean install

Look in your The Sims - Folder for a subfolder "SAVE" or "SAVEGAME".
Copy that folder to a "safe place" and reinstall your Sims.
After installing put the folder back to your Sims-Folder.