[ravenscape]

thanks for the suggestions, kh99!

To find and delete the PMs I did the following:

Using phpMyAdmin:

SELECT *
FROM `pmtext`
WHERE `fromusername` = "name"
LIMIT 120 , 30

I then used the checkbox in the results list to pick the offending PMs and delete them.

To change the PM count, I also used phpMyAdmin to bring up each user's profile info and edit the count number.

"mark all read" did not fix the problem. It appears to work only page-by-page, not globally, and there is no page with an unread PM.

Having the affected members delete all their PMs might do the trick, though it's potentially an inconvenience for them if they have PMs they'd like to keep.

If you really wanted to you could probably write a script to fix everyone's counters using the code from build_pm_counters() in private.php.

I'll check this out. Thanks!