Setup wizard appears instead of site

  • Resolved hamstair_toilichte

    (@hamstair_toilichte)


    8 years, 8 months ago

    A friend/client’s site has suddenly started displaying the WP Setup Wizard when you go to the site URL. This also appears if you try <site>/wp-admin or <site>/wp-login or <site>/login – all redirect to the wizard script <site>/wp-admin/install.php. Thus she and I can’t get into the WP Dashboard at all. Looking at the File Manager in the hosting account cpanel there are no obvious dodgy files.

    I’ve not cited her URL as, with the setup wizard appearing, the site is extremely vulnerable. The site’s been going for many years and has been hacked a few times, which I’ve fixed then installed Wordfence which has up to now kept hackbots out.

    Could someone suggest an initial diagnosis? Is there a manual tweak in a PHP script or DB table (I have FTP and MySQL access) which can unset the wizard?

    I know that the standard response is: you’ve been hacked, so you need to wipe the site and rebuild from scratch. That’s not an option.

    In the meantime, I’ve told her to report the problem to the hosting company and get them to take the site offline toot sweet.

    I did try to search for the problem in the Codex but couldn’t find a suitable search string, and anything with ‘setup wizard’ in picks up a bundle of hits.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • @hamstair_toilichte,

    Anytime the setup wizard appears it means that either:

    A) your WordPress files can connect to the database, but that site data is not found within the MySQL database itself

    B) the database is totally empty and not setup yet

    Sometimes this is because the table prefix is set incorrectly within the wp-config.php file but if you think that it’s related to hacking that is certainly possible as well.

    You should probably inspect the database via phpMyAdmin first if possible.

    MarcoS

    (@marcoastriders)

    check if your host provider , have some backups of your site, may you fix this with 50$ or something…

    less problems and save time ??

    Thread Starter hamstair_toilichte

    (@hamstair_toilichte)

    Thanks to Jesse and Marco for the replies.

    Jesse: I’ll check out your option (a). I’ve got BackWPUp set to carry out weekly DB backups, and monthly full site backups. If this problem recurs I’ll look at the DB first via phpMyAdmin as you suggest. I’ll also have a proper neb in wp-config.php.

    Marco: the hosting company, Catalyst2, are very good when it comes to customer support and hack fixing. In this case, they responded to my friend’s support call by restoring the site from a backup.

    Thread Starter hamstair_toilichte

    (@hamstair_toilichte)

    It turns out that the problem was caused by the hosting company, “issues with migration”, upgrading MySQL and PHP versions, so it looks like your option b), Jesse, was the cause as they must have ‘lost’ the database. Oh, well, at least they fixed it quickly, and there wasn’t a hack.

    Thanks again for the helpful replies ??

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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