Another update;  wallet.dat files may be corrupt.    My Bitcoin-Qt is *FINALLY* up to date. I attempted to replace the wallet.dat file with my old ones.  exact error returned is "wallet.dat corrupt, salvage failed". Same error with both older wallets I tried...

With regards to "salvage failed" error. I  played around with the valid wallet.dat file and noticed the "salvage" doesn't really try very hard.  the slightest amount of gibberish inserted into the file causes the error to appear.