I found a way to make this work. Did it for two sites and got the same good result:
1- Download a copy of all the plug-ins in the Plug-in folder to you local drive.
2- Erase all plug-ins in the plug-in folder on the server.
3- Reload the plug-in page in wordPress Admin. (you will get errors for all plug-ins since there’s no content).
4- Upload the the local copy of the plug-ins into the plug-ins folder again.
5- Reload the wordPress plug-in page, and all updates should show now. And your plug-ins should work as usual again.
just make sure you don’t delete the plug-ins from the admin area.
Not the most technical approach I know, but it worked for me twice.