i have tried to save a new version of a project. lets say i had song 7.1 and wanted to save it a as a new version, song 7.2 ( because i have already saved 7.1 as a wav, now i want 7.2 to be an mp3.(nothing has been changed with the project, just wanted a different file name to know which is which) when i try to render 7.2 the render window is showing me that the output file is saving as 7.1 (c:\ program files\REAPER\ 7.1.mp3) so i change it to output file(c:\program files\REAPER\ 7.2) and continue to render it. now i can get my saved wav. projects to windows media player and play them fine and burn them off to cd but i cant get an mp3 there. i have already downloaded LAME and the mp3 rendering status goes all the way through. with FL studio, when i rendered an mp3, it would come up in my recent items window in the start up menu. from there, it would try to find the file, i select "fix it", and it plays on windows media player with no problem. i can do this the same way with a wav. file from REAPER but like i said, the mp3's are not making it that far, the media player keeps telling me that song 7.2 in my recent items is still an RPP. file and cannot play it. am i making this more complicated then it should be? what am i doing wrong?

Make a folder called say Rendered and save your mp3s with the name of the song/project into that.Then you know where they are?

It would be worth opening a folder (any folder doesn't matter) and open tools -> folder options -> view and uncheck the little box that says hide file extensions for known file types. Doing this will let you see immediately what each file is. At the moment I suppose a wav file and an mp3 file look identical to you. Also do a search for the file using its extension and find where it's been placed. Steve