Oh 1 more interesting tidbit - the eco I tried & then deleted(this left me with just the ground plane) I loaded up the tree I tried to change & it wanted to eco!  Vue asked me if I wanted to populate LOL.  I opened a new scene loaded the same tree & viola it again asked if I wanted to populate.

Of course this all could have been that Vue just went belly up with all the other stuff I mentioned above that was happening.