Fatal Error "Failed opening required … wordfence-waf.php"

I have the same issue on one of my sites this morning.

This was my error:
PHP Warning: require_once(wordfenceHash.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/vg012web06/65/91/2909165/web/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfScanEngine.php on line 3PHP Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘wordfenceHash.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear’) in /home/vg012web06/65/91/2909165/web/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfScanEngine.php on line 3

According to this, it should be remedied by deleting the WordFence directory:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/emergency-is-this-a-wordfence-issue-is-wordfence-blocking-access-to-my-websit?replies=7

Maybe Dev can comment as to whether this is the thing to do and how to avoid this issue in the future….?

I renamed my wordfence folder and still have the problem

I found the user.ini file, removed wordfence out of that, but there was nothing else in the user.ini file, so it is blank.

now my site I can get into the backend but it has this new error:

Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required ‘/home/wp_t2z4gx/tunerschool.com/wp-blog-header.php’

I deleted my WordFence directory and my site seems fine now. I might re-install WF at some point but for now I am running Sucuri and some other security plugins.

Not sure if you can reverse what you did and then delete WF….

I solved my problem by copying an older backed up version of the header.php file into the site and it is fixed now.

Still dont like the fact that it crashed, and dont like that a file was deleted by wordfence.
debating not installing wordfence again unless I can get some answers towards this

This is the fix for me: https://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/wordfence-firewall-issue-with-file-wordfence-wafphp

You can, alternatively, re-create the file if you know the full path of your hosting account directory. The file belongs in your website’s root folder (where wp-config.php, index.php, etc. reside), and consists of the following:

<?php
// Before removing this file, please verify the PHP ini setting 'auto_prepend_file' does not point to this.

if (file_exists('<full/path/to/directory>/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/waf/bootstrap.php')) {
    define("WFWAF_LOG_PATH", '<full/path/to/directory>/wp-content/wflogs/');
    include_once '<full/path/to/directory>/wp-content/plugins/wordfence/waf/bootstrap.php';
}
?>

I mistakenly put in:
auto_prepend_file = wordfence-waf.php
in the php.ini file in /public_html (where WordPress is installed) and got the error that kenziedlt described. Couldn’t login to the admin area. Removing the part after the = sign fixed the problem but that’s not really what I wanted. I wanted to get the Extended Protection turned on, which apparently doesn’t work unless Wordfence can find and load the file wordfence-waf.php before WordPress starts up. Yes, I made an embarrassing rookie mistake. But after correcting it, is there ANY chance of getting the Optimize process to run and activate Extended Protection. From all I have read, it would be a good feature if it worked.

Update: After correcting the path to wordfence-waf.php in my local (in /public_html) php.ini file, the errors and load failures are gone. Also, the protection level instantly changed to Extended Protection and the button/link to Optimize Wordfence Firewall has disappeared (being no longer needed, I assume). It will be interesting to see if there is any improvement in performance.