I had to reinstall sims 3 on my laptop, and I lost all my preferences in SP and retuner. I started again from scratch, but none of the families in the town are automatically having babies any more. I can get around this using 'partner pollinate', but I would rather it all happened autonomously. Has anyone got any suggestions please?

There's a few reasons this could be happening, and it could be more than one getting in the way at the same time. Off the top of my head...

-- When a new game has just started, many already coupled sims don't necessarily know and like each other very well yet, or at least not as well as they should otherwise. It can take a few sim weeks before they settle in and start woohooing and making babies with each other.

-- Possibly your world is already at or over the default population cap or the world already has plenty of babies. Using MasterController, on City Hall run NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the pop-up filters. What kind of reading do you get for Residents? The others (Service and Homeless) don't really matter here. By default, SP imposes a Resident population cap of 150 for all worlds and there will be no immigration or autonomous baby making while at or over the cap while player directed actions like Try for Baby and MC > Pollinate still do work.
NRaas > SP > General Options > Options:Sims > Maximum Residents > Human
(set to 0 to remove the cap entirely, to a higher number than 150 if this is what is needed)

-- All of your town's households are already at the maximum household size, by default this is 8 for humans (as opposed to pets). That doesn't seem very likely unless you have changed the default maximum household size.
NRaas > SP > Town (Household, Lot, Caste) Options > Maximum Size > Human

-- You aren't really running SP's progression yet and EA's (or none) is still in control.
NRaas > SP > General Options > Enable Progression > True

>-- When a new game has just started, many already coupled sims don't necessarily know and like each other very well yet, or at least not as well as they should otherwise. It can take a few sim weeks before they settle in and start woohooing and making babies with each other.
I'm sorry, but are you joking? Maybe something was wrong with my game. When I enabled the SP (by EA), sims began to fruitful and multiply like rabbits. It happened very quickly. Also I was furious when interesting characters disappeared, and clones, wearing ridiculous outfits, have occupied the town. This option has been disabled ever since. I could probably use SP by nraas. Emigration, immigration, romantic and other relationships, the ability to breeding are controlled by settings. It's safer and more reliable for the game and my nerves. But I prefer to do everything on my own.
And sheridanhoughton I would like to recommend to export the mod settings, and make backups of saves.

I was not in any way describing what happens with EA's version of story progression. The OP is using NRaas SP, and that is what we mean by SP on this site. The only time NRaas SP should go into overdrive on baby making is when it detects that a town's population is out of balance on the Adult/Elder end and is in danger of de-populating, assuming aging is on.

You know, it's curious. And what balance will be used by default? Is it possible to force sims to do something on their own? If sims were able to be fruitful and multiply as a result of successful romantic interactions, that would be great. But let's face it... They don't want to do anything. Even if I control them, they can still refuse each other.

thanks for all your answers. my maximum residents is set to 150, but my town has a population of 75. only a couple of households have 8 people. I am running NRaas story progression.

Before I had to do the reinstall, my uncontrolled sims were having babies regularly. But I had serious problems and that is why I did the complete reinstall.

I do backups and export the mod settings, but I had to let these go with the complete reinstall in case any of that was the cause of the problems I was having.

I tried to remember all my previous settings, and I think the only new settings I used were to use 'castes' to allow romances between teens and adults.
any more ideas, anyone?

@sheridan - Yes. On City Hall/computer,
NRaas > SP >General Options > Options:Pregnancy > Chance of Attempt > (Default is 30)
Turn this up.

(Same Menu) > Increased Chance of Attempt > (Default is 10)
Also turn this up. This is the added chance of an attempted SP generated pregnancy each time the first attempt fails.

(Same Menu) > Cooldown Between Pregnancies and Cooldown Marriage to Pregnancy > (Both defaults are 3)
Turn these down for more frequent pregnancies and more pregnancies immediately after marriage.

If you use Woohooer and allow autonomous Risky and Try for Babies on the inactives, this will take over some of the babymaking. But it's not essential. Be prepared to dial these options back to where they were (at least) if things get carried away.

@Sara_Darkees - I'm sorry, but your comments are not on-topic. If you would like assistance in arranging SP and Woohooer (the romance manager of this mod collection) more to your liking, if you are actually to be using them, then I must ask that you please start your own thread.

thanks very much. I will give this a try now.

Actually, I think I must have messed up when using 'castes', because nothing seemed to work. So I have reset the SP and then gone through and set up my preferences again, and now sims are getting pregnant again. And I have saved the settings.

thanks for all your help.