can't access forum

[british]

Since April 1st, no one can access my forum. This is the error message we get:

There seems to have been a problem with the forum database.
Please try again by clicking the Refresh button in your web browser.

An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, whom you can also contact if the problem persists.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Our host doesn't show any system failure, so I know the server didn't crash. I can't access the Administrator CP since I can't access the forum. And I can't access our database directly either because only my co-administrator has the password to the server, and she's away on vacation!

Do you guys have any idea what may have caused it, and how I could fix it? (I'm a bit of a tech idiot, so bare with me!)

[Steve Machol]

We need to see the real error message. Right-click on the error page and go to View/Source. Then copy-n-paste the error message here.

[british]

<!--
Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT
userfield.*, usertextfield.*, user.*, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(passworddate) AS passworddate,
IF(displaygroupid=0, user.usergroupid, displaygroupid) AS displaygroupid,
language.phrasegroup_holiday AS phrasegroup_holiday,
language.phrasegroup_global AS phrasegroup_global,
language.options AS lang_options,
language.languagecode AS lang_code,
language.charset AS lang_charset,
language.locale AS lang_locale,
language.imagesoverride AS lang_imagesoverride,
language.dateoverride AS lang_dateoverride,
language.timeoverride AS lang_timeoverride,
language.registereddateoverride AS lang_registereddateoverride,
language.calformat1override AS lang_calformat1override,
language.calformat2override AS lang_calformat2override,
language.logdateoverride AS lang_logdateoverride,
language.decimalsep AS lang_decimalsep,
language.thousandsep AS lang_thousandsep

FROM user AS user
LEFT JOIN userfield AS userfield ON (user.userid = userfield.userid)
LEFT JOIN usertextfield AS usertextfield ON (usertextfield.userid = user.userid) INNER JOIN language AS language ON (language.languageid = IF(user.languageid = 0, 1, user.languageid))

WHERE user.userid = 30;

MySQL Error : Can't open file: 'userfield.MYI' (errno: 144)
Error Number : 1016

[Steve Machol]

MySQL error: 144 = Table is crashed and last repair failed

To fix this run Repair/Optimize in the Admin CP. You may need to run it more than once to fix all errors:

Admin CP -> Import & Maintenance -> Repair/Optimize Tables -> Check All -> Continue

If you cannot access your Admin CP then you will need to repair this table in phpMyAdmin.

[british]

If you cannot access your Admin CP then you will need to repair this table in phpMyAdmin.

I can't access that either, but thank you so much for your help!

I'll contact my co-admin again and tell her what to do.
Should we back-up the database before running a Repair? Is there a risk it will crash? (It did last time we attempted to upgrade.)

[Steve Machol]

It won't hurt to try and make a backup first but I'm not sure if that will work with a corrupted table.

[british]

Do you have any idea why this happened? I've read in other threads that it might be because the database was too big for the host/server. We also had a hacker last month. Could it be a hacking job?

[Steve Machol]

Datebase corruption is almost always a server issue. There is no way to know exactly what happened.