Playlists Lost and Found-Vista

[MimiLee]

While starting a show after opening Hoster 4.1.1 (Vista) my friend selected "file" to open a playlist. At that point the def001 playlist was showing with no songs. He tried to open another list and there were none showing. He did a search to start a playlist and it searched but would not allow him to add a song (all were “not on hard drive”).

He called me and I had him do a search for .hst files and it returned none (there are many). He had his older laptop with him and started the show with that one. He rebooted the newer laptop searched the recycle bin and found the playlist he created before closing Hoster earlier in the day. He restored it to the Hoster directory, started Hoster and opened the playlist but all songs were showing unavailable. He then reran the database and was able to use the restored playlist; however the other years worth of playlists were still not showing when he tried to open a different playlist.

He called me that evening and we did another search for the "missing playlists". We found all of them in another directory! We moved them back to the Hoster directory and they are all working just fine (we could have navigated to them but was easier to put them back where they belonged)

I've used Hoster since 11/2004 and he has used it since 4/2006. Neither of us have had anything anywhere near this happen before. I understand that a playlist doesn't have to be in the Hoster directory to be used and can be opened from any location; however it makes no sense that the ones that were there before "the incident" were in another directory.

I'm pretty sure this is one of those mysteries that cannot be completely explained but any input would be appreciated. Any idea why the hst files didn’t show up in the first search before the laptop was rebooted? The only thing he did different from any other day was to leave the laptop on battery (the Hoster program had been closed before leaving home) during the trip from his home to the show.chemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />