Windows 10 updated and restarted my computer. I had an unsaved Audacity project. Fortunately when the update was complete, I went into Audacity where a dialog box prompted me to indicate whether I wanted to recover the project. A short while after I indicated I want to recover, the dialog box “Audacity 2.4.2 How to get help” as well as the actual program froze and were not responding. I do not want to lose my file. Please help.
Windows 10 updated and restarted my computer.
Can you stop it from doing that? Audacity woke up in a different computer than it was in when it went down. That’s really hard to recover from.
This is one Google hit. There are others.
Koz
You do still need to do Windows updates. This just lets you do them when you want instead of in the middle of a production.
Koz
Someone will correct me, but I’d be really surprised if your show ever came back. Windows Update changes the computer software around. This isn’t the same computer you were using when the update started. It’s very serious.
Koz
Thank you for responding. It’s too late. Windows was updated but I was able to recover the file, but it says “not responding.” What should I do?
That project may be lost. When the system rebooted while Audacity is running, it may well have corrupted the Audacity project.
What you can try (this is a last ditch effort), is to force quit Audacity through the Windows Task Manager, then reboot the computer, then launch Audacity and see if Audacity can recover the project after the reboot. If Audacity fails again, then I expect that there is no chance of recovering the project.
Thank you so much, Steve and Kuz.
Well, is there any way I can export it to an MP3 from here on in?
If you can launch Audacity and the project is successfully recovered, then yes you can export.
If Audacity cannot recover the project, then no.
Steve and Kuz: I have good news. Despite Windows updating itself while Audacity was still operating, my very lenghty MP3 file was recovered!!! The file was not responding for quite awhile that I left it overnight in a last-ditch attempt to recover the file. To my surprise, it finally resolved itself and started to respond. But now my file is so large (270 hours or so) that the duration is reported wrong - it says 179 hours. However, if I play the file in Windows to the “end” at 179 hours it continues playing beyond 179 hours, but the marker still says that it’s at the end (179th hour). Do you know why?
That is one long project. 
My guess is that the MP3 is “variable bit rate” (“VBR”).
Several audio players on Windows (including Windows Media Player the last time I looked) report the length of VBR MP3s incorrectly. This is a bug in the player and it has been around for many years.
More information about MP3 encoder settings here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/mp3_export_options.html
Are we trying to rescue a surveillance event?
We’re not touching up the vocals in a song are we?
What is the show?
Koz