thanks matt, well i got the latest version now so we will see…
my only problem was that it randomly deleted my playlist info, and theres no way to know if that will happen till it does again on the new version! i’ve now lost lots of confidence to play out with it 
There has to be something somewhere either not set right or you may be doing something inadvertently that is causing that to happen. I know I lost playlists when I didn’t shut down right but I also do everything within Traktor. Maybe something with sorting in itunes and trying to sync them together is causing some werid thing to happen. I know when I make a playlist, I just right click on playlists, create playlist, name it, drag my tracks into it and its always there. I don’t save or export or anything else.
Inspired by this thread
My 2 cents
sounds like you have a corrupt nml file
do you know how i can check if thats the case, find out what’s causing it etc? what would you suggest? thanks
Yeah . file with NI support and they can check the NML.
You should have backups of earlier collections that should reinstate your collection and playlists. Playlists are stored in the collection.nml
BUT
You should make external backups of your collection by Exporting it to a folder (uncheck copy files).
Also if your laptop crashes or you shut down and kill Traktor (as you say you have) it does not create a new NML collection. This is done only when Traktor is succesfully shut down so what you should do when you are preparing and working is occasionally click the Traktor Collection and chose “Save Collection”
This is Traktors version of “Save” on an application like Word or Photoshop, so if you then have a crash you have not lost all your work.
Its sounds to me that Traktor is not shutting down properly.
If thats the case you need to trash the 'Traktor Settings.tsi".
This will open track to default settings and you can then import an older collection.nml . You will have to redo your UI settings.