Hey there, thanks for taking the time to help me out! I was able to download the archive project and try it. At first it failed to make pin assignments, but then I changed the project settings to my board and kept the current pin settings and it worked. I get switch control over GPIO[0] as before, and the same issue with the LED staying on as before unless GPIO[1] is shorted. So I went and switched GPIO[1] default to ground as you suggested and tried to load and it failed to program correctly. The I changed the default value on GPIO[0] and GPIO[1] together to ground and this time it programmed just fine but behaved exactly as before with the LED staying on unless shorted, which is strange since its set to ground. I've attached a picture of the change I made so you can tell me if I did it wrong.
Thank for the QSF file, I'll give that a try too. I was using a QSF created with Terasic DE2-115 System Builder V 2.0.0 that came on the CD with the board, but I'm not trusting anything 100% at this point. :-)
I had tried the EX_IO pins because on my particular board they correspond to an additional 14 pin expansion header located over near the power button. But I'm getting the same issues over there as well so no difference.
Please let me know if I messed up setting the pins to ground, I feel like this should be so easy but I'm such a beginner at this.