Problems after crash

[Katebekett]

Trying to resolve an issue. The person who originally setup the forum (and had access to the Host's cPanel) left because of creative differences. But not before he ran a script to make everyone - all 554 members, administrators (user group 6). We shut the board down in short order.

We have a reliable backup that we restored successfully after a re-organization of the board on the 4th of April 2011. but the backup does weird things to Vbulletin now.

Steps Followed:

Created New Database
Added new user
added user to database
installed vbulletin 4.1.2
restored the database backup via cPanel > MyPHPAdmin > import database
database gets populated, users, styles and all other associated stuff comes along


The input area worked fine before the database restore.

Here's the problem: login input area (id/password) does not work as normal, after the database restore. the "user name" text does not disappear when typing the member name, and the password is shown in clear TEXT, it even shows up as hint, instead of the usual dots.

where is it going wrong, and how do I fix it? :( . as this is a fresh install, I expected no corruption issues.

[Lynne]

I don't understand why you have both step 2 and 3. 2 should have added the user to the database.

Also, after importing a database, you may need to run the upgrade.php script.

Create a new style with no parent:

Styles & Templates > Style Manager > Add New Style
Parent Style: No Parent Style
Title: Default vBulletin
Allow User Selection: Yes
Save

Then browse the site using that totally default vbulletin style - do you still have the same problem?

Try disabling your modifications/plugins and see if you still have this problem.
Note: To temporarily disable the plugin system, edit includes/config.php and add this line right under <?php

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

[Katebekett]

Thanks for the advice Lynne,

Since I had no idea How MySql works, I went about it the long way around. I started with a clean test install in another directory. Then I started restoring 1 table at a time to the damaged directory. I found that when I restored the "datastore" table, it fixed the problem but also got rid of all the threads and posts. So I re-restored the damaged table, and the problem + Threads came back. So I expanded the Datastore table and found that If I just restored the "options" part of the table from the clean install, that worked too.

Then I also stumbled across that, if I went to my clean install, and did a forum settings xml backup, I could open this in a text editor, and fix the forum URL to point to the damaged forum, I can import this XML back via the damaged forum's ACP, and fix the issue. Then go back in and re-apply any customizations and VBH Tabs.

I know this sounds really low-tech, but I am a real n00b, when it comes to mysql. It's difficult to concentrate when there's over 500 members yelling blue murder, to have the forum back (and it's only a fan site :) )

I sincerely appreciate your assistance. Thanks!

[Lynne]

The datastore table is actually created from other information in your database. If you make a change to your options, then the options row in database is changed (as you saw). Same if you change something in the Forum Manager or Usergroup Manager or Plugin Manager, etc. It's kinda a cache for a bunch of often used information.