troubles activating and deactivating/deleting plugins

This may be a plugin or theme conflict. Please attempt to disable all plugins, and use one of the default (Twenty*) themes. If the problem goes away, enable them one by one to identify the source of your troubles.

If you can install plugins, install “Health Check”: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/health-check/ On the troubleshooting tab, you can click the button to disable all plugins and change the theme for you, while you’re still logged in, without affecting normal visitors to your site. You can then use its admin bar menu to turn on/off plugins and themes one at a time.

See https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-deactivate-all-plugins-when-not-able-to-access-wp-admin/

Hi Steve!
Thanks a lot, I’ll try and report.
Regards Achim

Okay, I installed it, but I can’t activate it (same problem as mentioned above).

Please try manually. See method number 2 here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-deactivate-all-plugins-when-not-able-to-access-wp-admin/

Haha! Great! ??

I changed the value of …options/active plugins/option value to a:0:{}, switched to wp and … all plugins were deactivated!

… but! …

On refresh all plugins were active again and when i looked at the db table, the previous value was back again!

That’s very weird. Please ask your host if they’re involved in this.

Okay, thank you for your support!

The story continues.

My provider assured me that there are no mechanisms that reset the db tables.
It must be a WP issue in combination with installed plugins.

So, are any plugins, e.g. security plugins, known to save db tables from being changed by resetting them?

Not that I know of. What security plugins do you have installed?

BBQ Firewall basic (I’d like to but can’t get rid of)
Patchstack Security basic (I’d like to but can’t get rid of)
Shield Security basic

If you temporarily disable those plugins, do the problems go away?

I can’t disable them the “normal” way.
I tried “deactivating” them by changing their directory names under wp-content/plugins/ by adding the prefix “_”.
WP then commented that the plugin was deactivated due to an error because the plugin file could not be found.
But the plugins cannot be activated/deactivated/deleted anyway. ??

If you try the method Steve suggested here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/troubles-activating-and-deactivating-deleting-plugins/#post-15692429
while downloading and activating a fresh copy of a Twenty* theme, do you get a different result?

If you’re using a premium theme, perhaps it keeps re-activating the plugins it (thinks) it needs.

Hello Ramona,

I have already tried Steve’s suggestion. But the db table and all plugins were “automatically” reset to the previous set (see my following post https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/troubles-activating-and-deactivating-deleting-plugins/#post-15692580).

Here (\wp-content\shield\ptguard\plugins) i found a list of .txt files (pluginname.txt and pluginname_meta.txt) for all plugins.
If I delete one of them or even the complete directory ptguard, it is reconstructed in no time with identical content!

I think I will have to deepdive in the plugin shield security.

What’s in wp-content/mu-plugins?