Thanks. I've actually already done the things you mentioned.
I had a little success with launching the 32- rather than 64-bit server and starting up the instances one at a time, then saving them. Interestingly one of the three instances refused to launch, with a message that it was "Invalid." I closed and re-opened, still in 32-bit mode, starting up that instance by itself, and didn't get the "invalid" message that time, so I saved that instance as well. However, when i clicked into it to edit a plugin, VEP5 crashed. At that point I gave up for the evening.
Wondering if I'll be able to get this to work, but possibly if I save the contents of the plugins themselves, then the frames, and open the frames in a new project I can get things going. But it's still very unclear to me what could be going on.
--Chuck