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This problem wasn't solvable in 24 hours so we can label it as a failure. That kind of outage isnt really acceptable hence the need for swift response and the request for paid assistance - and I appreciate you guys cant fix all the problems different people have, though saying 'it works for other people' is no help whatsoever for this particular problem which a fair few other people also had.
The only way out of it was to delete the entire file system and go back to a clean install of 3.2.0.
Which means I can no longer update further from there.
no, it just means that you have not found the correct combination of steps to get it updated.
saying that it works for others is good info. it means that the problem does not lie with phpbb but rather with either your methods or your particular server settings.
I suggest that you create a copy of your board either on your server or on your computer at home. then try the update again using the correct procedures.
As stated multiple times before I did update with the correct procedures, I've done it hundreds of times before. I updated two other smaller forums before attempting the larger one.
I figured I would get a solution to a specific phpBB coding error message on the official support forum, guess I figured wrong.
I ran into this error when I had custom columns that were added to the <table prefix>_users table by an extension.
I was able to resolve by disabling the extension and deleting its data (causing the columns to be deleted). This solution won't work for everyone, I was lucky that this was on a fresh upgrade from a 2.0 board and it was a new extension (the extension was activated during the Install phase of the conversion).