Midi tracks in an 88k project the audio engine is inop, No midi control from my Tascam DM3

I did a bunch of midi preproduction on my laptop to frame up what will eventually be an all acoustically recorded song. I set up the project at the studio on my main machine, routed all the inputs for the drums to be ready to go and when I imported the midi tracks it screwed  up everything. No more midi machine control, fader control, nothing. Spacebar does not play. No audio engine light. Nothing. If I undo the midi tracks everything returns.

I'm not really sure where this one starts. I did notice this week that a midi part in a song I moved over from Sonar 8.53 (48k) had some issues but I just bounced it to tracks and that worked so I didn't really dig in. Last night I was dead in the water because of this hangup. I ended up just bouncing the parts I needed to play out to audio files and I tracked to that but only after I burned myself out trying to troubleshoot.

I'm on X1D expanded. Win XP 32. I use a Tascam DM3200 to control X1 and I have several midi ins and outs associated with this board for MMC, fader control and timecode. I presently do not have any other midi devices associated with X1. The project is 88k. Maybe there's a big red flag in this list. With audio only it works wonderfully. Adding midi was a total wreck.

I tried opening the project in Sonar 8.53 and the results were similar. No audio engine, no midi control, no playback of any kind.

I feel like I'm leaving something out... 

Any ideas?