Problems loading files in harvest moon gba

Hi, I just started playing Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town on my laptop again using the Visual Boy Advance 1.8.0 beta. I'd played it using this emulator a few months back and had no problems, but when I tried to open my save file this time I had a problem - there seemed to be nothing in the save slots and it wouldn't load the most recent anymore. After some messing around with the files I somehow got my old file to load and played it for a while. While playing, I periodically saved in slot 2. The next day when I went to load it, I couldn't access it and it kept giving me the screen where you start a new game. After more messing around I found that it showed where I'd last saved - before I'd played again - in slot 1, and I was able to load that, but not from where I'd really last saved. It's really frustrating because I made a lot of progress and saved using the emulator but now can't figure out how to load the game. I'm not sure if it just didn't save properly, my progress is gone, or if I'm just doing the wrong thing. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question, haven't posted before, but it's really frustrating.

do you use that sgm file? maybe you can find some online
and if it keeps happening use no$gba or boycotadvance.
and if you use state slot can'thelp ya;

Do you use use Shift+F number keys to quick-save, and F number keys to quick-load? You could've mistakenly saved over your quicksave. I remember once I was playing Golden Sun I mistakenly pressed Shift+F1(save) while trying to press F1(load) causing me to save the game after being defeated. Luckily I saved to another slot previously.
Also the saved stats file ".sgm" are case sensitive so if you change the name of the ROM after you've saved eg. "harvest_moon-friend_of_ mineral_town" to "Harvest Moon - Friends Of Mineral Town"; the quick save slot will not work because it will be named "harvest_moon-friends_of_mineral_town2.sgm" (F2 slot) in the battery/savestate folder or what other folder directory you keep your quicksave/.sgm files.