Thanks for the responses. It looks like it IS the ini file. I didn't realize the editor makes its own backups, rather I try to simply make a copy of the whole directory every now and then. I only had one back up, I made another one, then discovered I had this problem, and it is effecting all but my old back ups. So... looks like I've got to read through a bunch of scripting.
*long sigh of relief*
@ego: thanks so much for the offer. I may take you up on it if I find I'm not making any progress, but I think I can manage from here.
Edit: Problem solved. I never found the actual problem, but I copied all the new code to the old ini and it worked, so easy fix, no losses. Thanks again!