File Error

My daughter is not a very happy camper. She has been playing Plants VS Zombies on her computer for quite some time and has really advanced and gotten lots of things that she needs to destroy those awful zombie creatures.
A week or so ago she went to play the game and got an error message about some incorrect file or something and the game refused to load. Not good. She was angry and telling me that if she had to start that game all over from scratch she was going to be totally angry. Well, that wasn't her exact words but her words were not fit for this journal lol (Don't worry, she is 20 years old and can swear if she wants to).
After not playing the game for a week or so now she came to me this afternoon with the disk for the game in her hand and asked me, nicely, if I could reinstall the game when I had time. Guess she has figured that starting the game over is better than not playing it at all.
While my two girls were out to the store I went and removed the files that were user data files and the game loaded right away. Unfortunately deleting those files also deleted all the work that she and her mother had done while playing the game. She has to start over.
The good news is that, now that both of them are back to equal settings they have decided they will have a contest to see who can get the most stuff/highest levels etc. I have no idea what the game does, I have never played it. I hope they have fun so as to take away the horror of losing all their saved stuff.