The hosting company(now i think the ex hosting company)'s server hard drive died. happened to be the server this site is hosted on. the company claimed they had backups of the sql database(not sure if they claimed to have backups of everything else, but i imagine they did), didn't in fact have backups. The choice was use a backup from feb 2006, or start from scratch, so the forums started from scratch. It feels all nice and clean, just like a new operating installation ^_^