[Jscottk]

Just in case anyone has the same problem I thought that it would be a good thing to post the answer.
It came from the proxies. We had a 1/2 size proxy to allow us to animate faster, but in the long run after finding our animators not using the proxy, we eliminated it. But the result was that in older projects it produced the error of “test for root allowed on directory only” and you had to click the return key for each layer. The solution was once the project opened you set all the proxies to none, re-saved and problem solved. Sure this is boring tech stuff, not as exciting as making fire from a solid but..if you run into this problem, you’ll be glad for this solution.

[Jscottk]

Same error
But Thank You for the suggestion.
I will only assume that this is a real stumper of question, due to the very limited responses.

Methods that have worked
Hitting the return key (hundreds of times)

Methods we have tried that do not work
Rebuilding/Collecting the project and moving all of the elements to a central element folder
Removing unused footage
Removing large photoshop files and reconnecting after opening.

All of those still left us with the same error