The user table became corrupt, which is why, when you tried to go to the portal page last night, it would say "could not query poll", and why some of the posts and topics you tried to click on would not come up.
I managed to get the user table in working order, so that at least more of the site was functional ie portal page. Then asked the webhost people to help, see if they had a backup from the night before.
Instead of really helping, they did some "myisamchk" function which further corrupted MORE tables and completely took down the site. Creating a "Critical Error: Could not update last session"
At that time, I was about yelling at my husband (he had his friend over and wanted attention), and about to cry that we were probably going to lose 2 weeks worth of posts and user accounts, because I hadn't backed up last week while my father-in-law was in town. *bangs head repeatedly*
The one thing the webhost guys did manage to do was point me to a thread on the phpbb.com forum discussing similar errors. After learning HOW to do table repair, I set about repairing the tables. I successfully repaired the corrupted tables, minus the private messages table because the file apparently was no longer there. After further investigation, SOMEHOW my private messages table file on my server got its extension changed. I fixed that, altered the permissions, then rebuilt/repaired that table, and wah-lah, it worked.
Sooooooooooo, I thought I had it all fixed until I woke up to RyanEX2000's question saying his account was gone.
I have since added his account and J Alberghini's as well (as best as I could, anyway). This, I THINK. SHOULD. be everything, and things should be able to resume normal operations.
*hopes* *prays*
Let me know if anyone else is having any problems whatsoever. I think it was just the 2 accounts missing because when I repaired the users table it said it deleted 2 rows. O_o
Thanks for your patience.
Love,
Rose