Stick with me here on my issue please. So recently, I have been having more crashes with Vegas than ever, I'm starting to believe it has something to do with the latest NVidia update due to other people on twitter and reddit saying they've been experiencing the same thing. What made it crash instantly was whenever I clicked on a sapphire plug in, like "S_Flicker", the second I clicked on it my Vegas would crash. I looked up if someone else was having the same issue and found a thread on reddit with a solution. On the extra info you get when your Vegas crashes, it showed the file that was, I guess, making it crash? I'm not too sure, but a user mentioned that they went to that file and redownloaded it and replaced it since it was corrupt, and that fixed them being able to use Sapphire Plugins. So, I did the same, this file was nvcuda64.dll and it was deep in the FileRepository, I only got to it by copy and pasting into my files from the crash report on Vegas. Anyways, I did as they said on this reddit thread, I downloaded the nvcuda64.dll from a website they linked so I could replace the file since that seemed to cause the crash. Once I did that and went back to Vegas it seemed to fix it, I could click on Sapphire plugins and even add them to my videos without crashes. This is when another issue popped up, which is why I write this, since doing that I now don't have the option of NVidia in my render settings. I've had saved custom render settings that I've used for years and the encoding it used is NVidia encoding. Since I changed that file that fixed the plug in crashes, it now doesn't show NVidia in the encoding options, and if I try to render using my custom render settings, it crashes. I'm not sure what to do now except just use the "Internet HD" render settings instead of the setting I've been using for years that say "NVidia's NVENC" on them, on the "MAGIX AVC/AAC" presets, which I prefer since its way faster but now I don't even have the option to use NVidia encoder to render. Yes, I've checked my preferences and it says I am using nvidia graphics card on Vegas fine for acceleration still, but now it just won't let me use the encoder for renders when I've used it for years. I am assuming it's due to the 1 file I changed to fix the crash from the plug in but if I re-add that file I deleted, will it fix it, or will it just leave out the NVidia encoder and still crash when clicking the plug in? I found a user on reddit that wrote this exact problem of the NVidia encoder just disappearing and he tried everything, from reinstalling previous NVidia drivers, to reinstalling Vegas, to clearing the cache and resetting the settings for Vegas and he had no way to get it back, he also stated he tried from Vegas 14-18 and still nothing. I will leave a link to the thread since his issue is similar to mine and maybe he explains himself better than me, only differences between his issue and mine is that I am on Vegas 16 and him on 17 and 18, he pirated his while I payed for mine, and for him NVidia won't even appear for acceleration purposes but it does for me just not for encoding for renders. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/VegasPro/comments/p58kej/nvenc_codec_missing_in_vegas_pro_17/
Wondering what I can do to fix this, try resetting Vegas settings? I still have the corrupted nvcuda64.dll file that I removed and replaced with a new version to stop the crashing, do I go back and add that corrupted file? I'm not sure if that will fix the issue but I'm thinking it will still not work and go back to crashing when I click a saphire plug in.
I'll leave some info on my PC, graphics cards, etc. (Just copy-pasting my System)
Processor: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13620H, 2400 Mhz, 10 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU
RAM: 40GB
Driver: Studio Driver 576.52
Windows 11
Vegas Pro 16

If anyone has a suggestion on how I can get back NVidia encoding as a render option, it would be great. Sorry if I didn't explain myself well in this post, it is my first post here, and I'm not tech-savvy at all. Overall, this isn't the biggest issue in the world as I can instead use the Internet HD render presets in the "MAGIX AVC/AAC" presets instead of the ones I've been using with NVidia encoding, the only issue is how slow everything renders now in comparison, as well as it honestly looking way worse until I started messing with the settings since it has different settings that I'm used to.

I am attaching an image of one of the render presets that I used to be able to use, as you can see, it says to use for NVidia encoding however, it no longer shows NVidia as an option in the drop down, if I were to click render, it would crash since it wants to use NVidia for rendering yet NVidia isn't there to be used.