Dashboard search for pages returns default set

Hello,

Using WP 2.4.8 on LAMP with 9000+ pages (might be relevant) a custom theme.

It all began a few days ago, and of course i thought that if i ignored the problem, it’d go away. HAHA HA HA HA HA I was a fool.

So what happens is, i go from the dash, to pages. (Edit pages)
Then i type an existing page name into the search field, and click “Search Pages”, what i get is the same stuff that was there initially.

It even seems to flicker a little, as though it is getting new data.

But this makes it darn near impossible to update existing pages.
Very strange.

Any ideas? Perhaps some config file i could check?

Any help is welcome.
-Alex