Imported Photos only show up as Rejected

Question

Hey All,
Did some searching but couldn't find anything that described my problem. I recently imported photos from 3 memory cards into three separate new projects. All of the imports worked fine (was importing directly from camera) and I left Aperture to create the previews/thumbnails etc. I came back to everything completed and shut down the program.
The next day I notice the start up screen doesn't tell me I have any pictures that haven't been updated in a vault (odd because I hadn't updated with the newly added pictures). I find all the images in all three projects are not there. I go into the external drive that houses my Aperture library, 'Open Contents' etc and get to the new projects, all the photos are there physically on the drive, inside of my Aperture managed library but do not show up in Aperture at all. Nothing in my 'Added in last week' folder, nothing in Rejected folder, nothing in All Photos, and nothing in the individual projects. On a whim I decide to search rejected photos in each project. Low and behold there they are. Okay, I re-tag every photo with 1 star, they show up now in unrated or better, but this goes away when I re-boot Aperture. Now I have a bunch of photos rated at one star but only show up when I search 'rejected' in the individual projects and don't show up in any of other folders I mentiond or any other search.
I tried:
-updating Aperture
-copy/pasting the projects out of aperture library and importing whole projects.
-moving pictures to different projects
-re creating previews
Nothing has worked, anyone heard of this before?

Answer 1

Just to clarify,
1) is the problem limited to the same exact photos, no matter where they go in the Library?
2) Did you try making fresh new versions from the same masters, and deleting the old probelatic versions, to see if new versions had the same problem?
3) were all photos from the same import session affected, or, all imports from the same day?
4) Have you had any further problem with newer imports (test shoot & import)?
If "YES" to #1, there has to be a common link between these individual photos. It's highly unlikely that the master files are at fault, because rejects/ratings seem to be Aperture-specific metadata tags and therefore assigned only to the versions, not masters. See if generating new versions from the master file might fix the problem, but DO NOT lift-stamp any metadata from old problematic versions onto new ones.
Hope this helps narrow things down.
best,
Jin