i uninstalled limewire and trashed all files because i was having so many problems. i reinstalled limewire then tried to play the songs that i had already downloaded, over three hundred over the past three years. now i'm getting a message that says "the song could not be used because the original file could not be found." have i lost all my files (songs) that have taken over three years to compile?

Can Sherlock find any files on your hard drive whose name contains ".mp3"?

Hope the tunes are buried somewhere unexpected. What OS are you using?

thanks so much for the reply. i'm feeling a little sick about this.

sherlock turned up only some songs i had in a separate folder. my os is mac 9.1

Ouch. I used to use Norton Utilities for Mac OS 9 to recover deleted files. Provided you haven't overwritten the free space maybe a friend can help you with Norton, or check them out on the web.

Back-ups can be a pain, but sure are useful. Sorry I can't help more, but good luck. At least there's a chance you can recover some of your deleted files.