GMAX user with GMAX problem

hi all, had alot of computer related problems latley... so I just got aorund to putting GMAX back on... and now I can't load GMAX files that I made... I'm confused...
I try to open them and I get a:
"an error has occurred and the application will now close.
No scene changes have occurred since your last save."

erm... any help people?
I'm confussed... and I really need to get it working ASAP... I'm working on a li'l tech-demo with cubemapped normalmapping with moveable light sources... bit hard to do that if I can't make a li'l animated model that actually looks good :(

I'd say your safest bet is all your original data is now corrupt.

Autodesk recently discontinued gmax. I have no idea if this is related.

I figured my data was corrupt... but wether I made it before or after I re-installed it... just causes the same error...
Maybe it's the fact I'm using windows 2000 with the newest service pack... I dunno... I'm confused