Alright...so I went through and cleaned up the horizontal MAME rig, deleting unnecessary items, extras, etc because I was running a bit low on space.
Everything appears to be working now EXCEPT I somehow lost .PNG file support for MAMEWAH? .PNG image files load up fine separate from MAMEWAH just like a ..jpg, .gif, .tif file etc, but in MAMEWAH no .png files appear at all. I proved this by changing my usual OPTIONS.PNG file to a separate OPTIONS.JPG file and sure enough, the image loaded (in this case the background image for the OPTIONS menu). This wouldn't be such a problem, I could easily change all the background elements to .JPG files, but the problem is that all the TITLES, SCREENS, and MARQUEES that I use for the front end are also all .PNG files.
Now what in the heck could I have deleted from the MAMEWAH folder (or elsewhere?) to prevent only .PNG files from loading?
EDIT: From the LOG file...
08/01/2009 5:44:15 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\titles\invaders.png
08/01/2009 5:44:15 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\marquees\invaders.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\titles\spacbatt.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\marquees\uniwars.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\titles\spacbat2.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\titles\sbsgomo.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\marquees\bioship.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\titles\spacbeam.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\titles\spacefb.png
08/01/2009 5:44:16 PM Bad image file: c:\mame\marquees\spacefb.png
Now...I know they're not "bad image files"... what gives?