Premiere problems: Files going haywire

I have Adobe Premiere 5.1, which is kinna old, but it's what I've got.

I'm having a problem where certain files are dropping out of my project. So far only .wav files, and so far only very specific ones; they seem to drop out in order which is really weird. Here's how it works:

Step 1: Load up Premiere and load up my project
Step 2: Attempt to change the speed or duration of any given .wav file. This message will appear:

Premiere.exe - Bad Image
The application or DLL [fill in filename] is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation.

The filename is the name of the specific .wav file that goes away, which is neither an application nor a DLL. Nor is it the same file as the one I'm altering; it's always the SAME .wav file...and if I do this again, it'll always be the same NEXT file it doesn't like.

Step 3: Save the project
Step 4: Reopen the project; notice that the file it said was a bad DLL or application is now gone.
Step 5: Repeat from step 2; a different .wav will now be claimed to be a bad application or DLL

I have tried reinstalling Premiere, which did absolutely no good at all. I have tried restoring my project from a backup, which I thankfully did yesterday (phew!), but that didn't help either. I have absolutely NO idea what's going on; this just started this afternoon.

Even if I didn't alter the speed or duration of a file inside Premiere, if I altered the file externally and saved it as a new file, this would still be a problem because the first file continually drops out, nothing I can do about it. And it's a critical piece of dialogue. I've even tried renaming and making a copy of that file that drops out, replacing the original with it, but it doesn't help...

I hope someone knows what the frell is going on, because I am stumped...and @#$%ING PISSED OFF!
Any help would be deeply appreciated. Thanks.

 

This is why I use Vegas.
I know that's not helpful, but I'm just sayin'. Premiere is a nastier than an ex-girlfriend who you dumped through e-mail after having just seen her, then sees you with a supermodel soon after. It's nasty.
It would do things like that to me all the time. I'd work on a project, close it, come back to it the next day, and every single clip would be edited for time properly, but their placement from the original video would be shifted like 5 frames.
And it eats processing power way too much. And makes big preview files. And eats innocent hard drives. And small animals.


Okay, I'm done.

Anyway, if it's the same clip that keeps dropping out... what if you were to just render out the audio on its own and have it as one track while you're touching up the edit? Just render out what you know is finished. That way, if things like this happen, it won't affect what you've already got.

//snuggles Vegas to sleep

-Vaportrail

 

Yeah, well, I've got about sixteeen minutes edited together...recreating that in another program would be a huge pain in the tuckus. There are a lot of small sound effects all over the place; it could take months.

It will, tho.
If I render out what I've got, I have two options: render it out completely uncompressed and have a file the size of Nebraska--which I might not be able to actually do, just for want of harddrive space, and I think both Premiere and Windows gag on files above a certain size anyway--or render it out compressed and have it look even uglier (and take up more space; I've discovered that files that started out uncompressed will compress a lot better when rendering the file. My fan film's final, compiled size has been decreasing ever since I started replacing preview files with finalized and uncompressed footage) when I got to the final version.
I find neither option particularly acceptable.

Besides, it's multiple clips that drop out, and while they only drop out one at a time, they do so in sequence...and not all from one end or another of the run-length of the video; they'll drop out of the middle, too. So...no guarantees that whatever I'd render out would be at all usable.

I haven't had problems with Premiere in AGES, and I have no idea what caused it all of a sudden.