I tried all that you said and it still doesn't show up. The box is checked in "view", and if I uncheck and recheck it, or press Alt5, nothing happens. If I open a new project, it still isn't there. Would it help to reinstall and if I do, do I lose my current project? Thanks for any help!

is it docked with your video preview window? or docked on its own and hiding behind the video preview window?

If I "x" out the preview window, the other tabs just continue acroos the screen. I also x'd out all the other tabs (transitions, fx effects, etc) and then the timelines just take over the screen. How do I know if it is docked with my video preview screen? It was like I just moved it off of the whole program or something. I even "restored down" the program so it was smaller on my screen and tried to search outside the box. This is really frustrating! Thanks again!

if you 'x' out all the tabs you should be left with just the timeline...at this point if you select 'view' 'project media'...it should pop up at the bottom...you can 'pull up' the bottom of the timeline screen and reveal a window space underneath...sometimes things hide there, but it sound like not in your case. You might try 'options' > 'preferences' >'default all' and see if that does it.
You don't have two monitors running do you?

I appreciate all your help. Unfortunately nothing worked. It is very strange, because I went to "import media" and imported a song, and it acted like I got it into the program but I can't find it anywhere! Same with a picture I scanned in! I think I may have to reinstall, do you think so?

i just replicated your problem! let me see if i can fix it...can;t find it now myself!

in my case...i moved the tabbed 'project media' window to the bottom right of the program screen and it basically disappeared and checking or unchecking 'view' > 'project media' did nothing...gone off the screen...no way to get it back; however when I made the vegas program window smaller (not maximized) and then deselected 'view'>'project media' and then re-selected it,the 'project media'window popped up in a window sort of outside the vegas main window...is that clear?

I don't have a "project media" choice under view, just "media pool". Is that the same thing? If it is, when I do what you said, nothing happens. Am I looking in the wrong place for "project media"?

ok, here is one more wierd thing, when I uncheck media pool and then recheck it, the toolbar words go from dark to light, but they don't do that when I check and uncheck anything else. Does that give any clues as to what is going on? Thanks for being so helpful!

One last thing- I am working with Vegas 5.

yes...they're probably going light to dark because the main vegas window is losing 'focus' because you're media pool is hidden off the main vegas window...it happens on my version of 5.0 (on an old computer)...i think if you make sure your windows toolbar is set to 'auto-hide', you'll see a very tiny corner of the media pool window in the very lower right part of the vegas window...maybe very tiny!

I just uninstalled and reinstalled the program- didn't lose the project and everything is back to normal. Sure appreciate the time you took to help me!!

MemoryMaker,
one thing you can do, since you are struggling with it, is to hold CTRL+SHIFT while starting Vegas. This will restore all your defaults. It will reset everything in Vegas, so if you've set up any custom settings in the Prefs, they'll need to be restored. However, this isn't a very big deal overall, as long as you're aware that defaults will be reset.