FIXED IT! Thanks again John for pointing me in the right direction.
What I ended up doing was uninstalling all my audio editing programs (Audacity, Sony ACID), the uninstalling Vegas, cleaning system of all old Vegas files. Then I downloaded and reinstalled Vegas 14 Pro onto a DIFFERENT SSD. Then I tested it and it worked with all the MP3 files I could throw at it. No problems. Then I reinstalled all the audio editing programs and it still works.
Thanks for the help. And I can only hope someone in the future sees this and it helps them too. ????