VisualBoyAdvance help

Hi,
I'm reaaaally new to this, so please bear with me!
I recently downloaded the VisualBoyAdvance emulator and have been playing a game on there for a while now. I was saving it under "save game" and in different slots as I went on, but I was avoiding shutting down my laptop in case it wasn't working. ...aaaand today, it restarted on its own and I lost everything.
When I go on there now, there isn't anything in the slots; they're empty. In my folder for the game, there are files which I assume are my saves. They're all called "2377 - Mother 3 (J)(WRG)1.sg1", "2377 - Mother 3 (J)(WRG)2.sg1", "2377 - Mother 3 (J)(WRG)3.sg1", etc. All the same, just with different numbers at the end. I clicked on the most recent one, and it comes up as an error that says "unsupported file type". Kinda confuses me why the emulator would save it as a file type that doesn't even work with it?
I would really hate to start over from the beginning, but that's probably what I have to do, right? lol, I just thought I'd try to ask people who actually know what they're doing with this in case there's any way I can fix it. And if there's not, how do I stop this from happening again, in case my computer restarts on its own again?
Thank you!

Hey! Welcome to emulator zone.

Sorry to hear about your problems with VisualBoy.

From what I know saving the way you have been should have worked.

It may be down to the version of VisualBoyAdvance you have.

Also keeping your laptop on permanently to play Gameboy advance games sounds like a pain too. You could try getting another Visualboy emulator version then saving in-game as well as using their savestate.

http://emulatorlowdown.com/wp-conten.../03/visual.jpg

Did you know you can also get a GBA emulator for your phone or tablet from the Google Play Store?

You could then play the games on the go and not be chained to your laptop.

I wrote about the Nintendo DS version of this but its the same for VisualBoy, take a look.

http://emulatorlowdown.com/2018/02/1...c-ds-emulator/