Hi Walter,
I was able to reproduce this problem. I've opened this CQ to track it: SDSCM00047639 NPE during project build after upgrading the project's compiler version. I will look into fixing this for the upcoming CCS v5.5.0.
Until the fix is available, just avoid upgrading the project's compiler version - when you import an existing project, if its original compiler is not registered with CCS, then the latest compiler available in CCS will be used to build the project - in your case it's ARM v5.0.4. If you open the Properties view, you would see that the original compiler version for your project is 4.6.4, but the effective version is 5.0.4. So you do not need to explicitly upgrade the project to v5.0.4 of the compiler.
In your case, since you've imported the project without copying it into workspace, once you've upgraded the compiler version, the master copy of the project was modified. So, you would have to reinstall Starterware to roll all the edited example projects back to their original state.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
- Baltasar