Word document was erased cannot autorecover

i run windows xp. i was doing an assignment and had multple word documents open, one of them froze, then all of them closed. send/ dont send error report come on the screen. I clicked dont send. I then tried to open up word to see if my document was autosaved but it wasnt. now i am having trouble locating it anywhere on my computer, and it was really important. <gras>could someone please help me try and recover it?