If you go to your site some time and get a host of messages about tables being corrupt (or nothing displayed at all) you may have a vBulletin table damaged or corrupted. Often, even with big sites, this can occur for a number of reasons. Just as often you can fix these issues quickly without having to do a full database restore from a backup.

When you have a table corruption you will most likely have received a message, email, etc. from the server indicating that a particular table has been marked as corrupted or damaged. Note the name of the table in the message as you'll use it below.

The following is a list of steps to take if, because of the corruption, you can't log into AdminCP:

1) Log into the machine using a command line
2) cd (change directory) to your forums/includes directory
3) In a text editor open config.php (ie - "nano config.php)
4) Write down the following values that are set for the following:

$config['Database']['dbname']
$config['MasterServer']['username']
$config['MasterServer']['password']

5) Exit out of the editor
6) On the command line enter the following

mysqlcheck -u $username -p $dbname user

7) Hit return and enter $password when prompted

Note: replace the $username, $dbname, $password with the values you noted above

8) This will run a check on the table in question, user table in this case, and should come back with some type of indication that its broken.

9) Run the following command to attempt a repair

mysqlcheck -u $username -p $dbname --auto-repair user

This will attempt a repair

10) If this returns a message that it was able to repair, run the command again in step 6 to insure it you receive an "OK" response.

11) If OK then try to access your AdminCP

12) Once in Admincp go to Maintenance => Repair/Optimize Tables

13) Click Check All (top right) and then set Optimize Tables and Repair Tables to yes before clicking Continue

14) You should run this a couple of times until you see "OK" or "Table is already up to date listed next to each table