I hope someone here can help me. I have the version 5.46a and I love it. I never wanted to upgrade. There were the occasional glitch, but it basically is the best BB I've ever seen. Well, this morning it appears that all of the Users have been deleted. They still show up in the control panel, but the name is missing when you search them and they get pulled up. To make matters worse, soon after I heard this, MY name is now gone, too! I have no access to Administrative functions. Is there some kind of secret way for tech support to go in through the back door and register me, so I can then have my Administrative access back? What if I upgraded? Would I then be able to have access back? Even if I told all my Members that they have to re-register, that would be okay. As it stands now, I can't even post on the Board to inform them to re-register. And since it is set at me having to approve all memberships, it wouldn't even work, because I can't access my own control panel. HELP!

Well you may be hosed.
Even upgrading will not help if files are corrupted or deleted
First thing is find the member directory. There is a file for each member. Plus a couple of other files for member count etc.
Each member file holds all the info such as username, password, User rights.
All the files are visible using a text editor nothing is encrypted.
I can't remember what line in the file is for administrator but it is near the top 10 lines or so. and it will contain the word administrator
If you have a backup try uploading your member 1 file.
It should be something like 0001.cgi.
That should be you. If that works you may need to upload all the member files.
Either you have been hacked or all of your files are corrupted.

It might also be helpful if you posted the url to your board.
So some of us can take a peek.

Just for your info. If you don't have a functioning board even as old as it is. Upgrading would not resolve your issue you would still be starting over with a net new board.

So I would say worst case. No matter how old your backup is. Restore that backup and live with what was lost in between then.
Classic has been gone for a long time. It is only supported to upgrade to the current version.
There are a couple of people here that still use it. But there are a lot of security issues with Classic especially the 5.x versions.

If you ask for help here. That person will need FTP access to your site and or a copy of your most recent backup.

Check your members directory and ensure the files still exist; you'll want to open one of the files and check to make sure it's not blank as well.

If they've been blanked out you'll need to restore them via a backup you've created.

You'll definitely want to upgrade, the build you're running is vastly old, ad as you've discovered, likely insecure.

My hosting company does regular back-ups. Where would my member files be located?

They'd be wherever your config is set to store them... It'd vary install to install; check out your vars_config.cgi file

Is there any way I can reset it so I can be the first Member again (I will be) and be the Administrator? Then everyone else can just register again.

Well, I'd still say go get your host to restore stuff; by going this route you'll end up with items being assigned to users that they don't belong... you'll have a nut house with people getting others pm's and being assigned others posts..

I just re-registered, so the Board is working properly. Do you think the Advanced Support guys can go in and make my new registration Administrator? If so, that solves the problem. I'll temporarily remove the Registration Approval and let them all re-register en masse. What do you think? Is it possible for the creators of UBB to go in and designate an Administrator through the back door so to speak?

We don't have PMs on my Board.

If there were a back door to the program so to speak it would be picked up by the script kiddies and used to destroy every UBB out there. The code is open source for a reason and that is for others to be able to modify and create new features and things for the community.

If the code was compiled and no longer available to the community in general then the creators would be tasked with every little aspect of bug finding and development alone without others input causing a decline in the software popularity and distribution.

Well, there is no back door; it'd simply be a matter of setting the flags in your user file to be an administrator... I'm not sure of the line or the data however since it's been an eternity since I've used classic...

You really should upgrade...

<Loginname>
<Password>
<emailaddress>
<WebURL>
WriteAdmin& <------ Need this for being an admin
<morecrap>
<morecrap>
<Post Count>
Administrator <---- user title

Also the original master password was:
username Admin5
password 4tugboat

Give it a try.

You were supposed to change it or delete it after you installed the board.
If you left it intact. I would guess someone used it to delete your members.
Anyway the documentation for your version is
HERE

I totally for got about that. Yes look for that and if it is there get rid of it pronto.

I'd have your web host restore from a backup and then upgrade to at least ubb.classic 6.7.3

There are thousands of the 5-series Ultimate.cgi forums still out there - you'd be amazed at the number/types of sites that still run the old stuff

I'm still running one of my old boards under the old perl UBB. Only cus I never rewrote my firewall to PHP that I need on that board.