Hi Lighthorse, wow that must be some render, I hope we get to see it posted in the galleries.
 I finally found a work around to get my scenes to show up, it was kind of a PITA, but it worked so I'm happy.
 Since I hadn't actually deleted the content folder from the C:/Daz/Studio folder, what I did was go back, and point DazStudio to that content folder, opened up my scene, then with the scene still open, went to preferences, removed THAT content folder and pointed to the new location of content on external drive. Then saved the scene, also in a new folder on external. Closed out the scene, then still pointed at the new content folder, opened it again, just to make sure it would open, and that worked. Had to do that for all the scenes I had saved, so it was a little time consuming, but not nearly as time consuming as it would have been to recreate all my saved scenes.  I'd still like to know what caused the problem, but hey, I'm a pretty happy camper right now, lol. Thanks for your help.
and when you get the time, if you still feel like checking out the problem, I'd sure appreciate it.
cimaira