Okay, Dean is devastated - finished an awesome edit and went to render as a movie - computer fell asleep and wouldn't wake up - closed off computer and now project won't open.

It's saying, "A error occurred while loading the project file Highlight.veg. The file is most likely corrupt or of an unknown format"

Please help or he will have to start again - a full days work gone (:

Look for the backup file named Highlight.veg.bak
If it's in the same folder as Highlight.veg, move it to a different location, rename it as Highlight.veg and try to open it.
If it works, immediately save it as a new version, for example Highlight-new.veg and then render it.

tried that already

Sorry Rochelle but I'm out of ideas :-(
If no one else has any ideas, all I can suggest is sending the broken veg file to Sony as they may be able to fix it for you.
Considering the potential response time though (a few days, if not more), it may be quicker to rebuild it.

It's a long shot, but you might try running disc checker. That's what I would do. It has fixed things for me more than once.

Dean went into his C drive to where the autosave projects get held and restored to a previous version - so got an old autosaved one...not the complete project but sufficient enough to not have to start from scratch.

OMG - hope that never happens again

Rochelle, install Excalibur and use the free "Auto Save" plugin. It will create a series of backups - one every "x" minutes. Then you have more than the project file, a single "bak" file, and possibly an "autosaved" file.

Thanks Edward - I've told Dean to download it.
The project seems to be destined for challenges...don't know what's going on because we've never had so much trouble with a project failing in render before.

Finally dean recreated the clip and after a full day of trials, he has made the clip

useful information, thanks