How do you get the starting save for a game?

When I play HOF games, I play through them then get the starting save from an autosave. But I started another game in the middle of my current one, and now THAT is the autosave! How do I get the starting save?

Launch the game and save it before any move.

It's too late for that--the autosave from his first game was overwritten. A data recovery utility might be able to get the original save back. Otherwise, SOL. In the future, you may want to rename the current game initial save before launching and starting a new game.

Doesn't really matter that much, terrible finish date and started the challenge too late. Realised I made the same mistake with my G-Minor as well, which I have started again and improved.

I have established a sub folder in the saves folder where I save game starts, in case I ever want to play one again. Before doing anything in the game, I save the game into that folder, with a name that will remind me what game it is.

^^I do the same thing. I have a separate save folder called "HOF" under the "Saves" directory. I don't use Mapfinder anymore, but that obviously keeps your start save.

I usually save the initial start as a "template" save -with the settings I want or that are required for the Challenge/Guantlet - that I can always go back to to regenerate saves from. Each new start I regenerate I save to a subfolder under HOF folder that is named for the Challenge or Gauntlet. I add "a,b,c,..." to the end of the file name, as I will usually regenerate several acceptable starts first before playing. While playing I will name the "interim" saves with the same letter (a,b,c..) as the save I started from to keep track of it.

Another good idea is to go to "Menu>Your Details" while in the "template" save, and change the first field "Leader Name" by appending the name/# of the Gauntlet or Challenge at the end before saving it. Each new game generated and saved while have a file naming convention of "your name game name". For example, "lymond GMaj 126"