Thank you David. Unfortunately I had to factory reset everything. I do have a copy of all my EPUBS on computer, all categorized. The only thing I didn't do was have them marked which was read and what wasn't.
There is a bit of light in this dark tunnel. Just before resetting everything, I opened the Kobo in Calibre and it actually maintained the 'read/unread' settings. So I copied all those files in their respective folders. I will still have to update each of the 2000+ files manually, but at least I know which ones are read or not read.
I reset the Kobo, installed with an older version using this thread as guidance:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=224127
And now I'm in the process of seeing if I can have Calibre automatically set things up back the way they were. Not sure what this software can do but I'm about to find out.