How to recover sound of a project or Audacity funcionality.

[dakoquintana]

This is my first time in a forum- please be patient- I read all the given help in Tips, Tutorials and docs to no avail. First of all I'm using Audacity 1.2.6 in a Dell Studio 540, 64 bit , Vista. One night I saved an unfinished project, probably incorrectly, it created 2 files (.aup and a data file) they were on my desktop and not in a folder. In order not to confuse them I changed their name. The next day I could not get any sound from that unfinished project. It was in mono only and the stereo and left and right channels were grayed out. Then I tried to play other untouched MP3 files, but I could not, no sound at all. Then I uninstalled Audacity only and downloaded again to no avail. I tried to import the audio (.aup file) using the File>open, no luck. What I don't understand is Why I can't play/open (meaning no sound) other untouched files? Can somebody please help? dakoquintana.

[steve]

This is my first time in a forum- please be patient

No worries - everyone has a first time - welcome to the forum.

First of all I'm using Audacity 1.2.6 in a Dell Studio 540, 64 bit , Vista.

Audacity 1.2.6 is really old and not recommended for Vista.
The recommended version is Audacity 1.3.12

it created 2 files (.aup and a data file)

To be a bit more precise, it created a .AUP file and a data folder.

In order not to confuse them I changed their name.

Which would seem like a harmless thing to do, but no no no. Not harmless.
The .AUP file contains references to hundreds of bits of data that are in the data folder, and possibly other locations on the computer.
If any of these files change with either a different file name or a different folder location, the projects turns to dust because Audacity will be unable to locate all of the bits of data that are required to construct the project.

If you can rename the files and folders to their original locations with their original names, then you may be able to get your projects working again if you are extremely lucky, but the names and locations must be exactly right.

There is a more thorough explanation of this in the documentation here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/File_Management_Tips