Hello. How do I recreate a ringtone I have lost?

Question

I used to have a ringtone that was an extract of a song from my itunes library.  But since I updated the software on either my iphone or itunes (I am not sure which update is the culprit)  I have lost the ringtone from my phone.  It still exists in my itunes library as an m4a file.  I have duplicated it and changed the new file to an m4r file.  I have tried moving it to my desktop and telling it to open in itunes, it does  play it but doesn't add it to the library, either in music or tones.  I have tried moving the file manually to the tones folder and going to tones in itunes and adding it but nothing, it doesn't show up.  The file also moves itself out of the tones folders and into the music folder. 
When I look at the properties of the file it says it's a ringtone. 
I am running itunes version 11.0.1 (12)  and my phone is an iphone 3gs. Please help - it was the ringtone I used for my sisier and it always made me laugh when she rang.

Answer 1

Hmm. You seem to have followed all the correct steps, I must admit.
The only suggestion I can make now is to make a copy of the m4a file and keep it off the main computer drive and then delete all traces of the original. My logic is that then iTunes won't then be able to find something similar to the m4r so it can't move it to the music folder.
Then connect your iPhone again and click on its tab and in turn the "On This Phone" tab to check whether its under the Tones section for the phone to the left of the screen. If it isn't there click "Done" go back to the main menu and again click on the tab to the left, under Music - one of the sections is "Tones" again. Click on the m4r file (on the name you've assigned to it) and drag it to the right where the Devices panel appears, drop it in and that should be all ...