Hi - I'm a long time ASP and ASP.NET guy (well, as long as you can be on .NET). New to DNN, but did major projects with Rainbow, so I understand the application.

The problem is I did something without good understanding, and damaged the install after about 30 hours of intense work getting a site set up after a hosting service had a crash. Built all from scratch and don't want to lose it.

Anyway, it started when, for some reason I still don't know, in "edit" mode (as Host), every "user" module would show only its title. No popup menu, no content. Every page. The Host and Admin pages were fine, and the pages were fine in view mode. I had uploaded a few additional commercial modules, which had been working fine.

I got the idea maybe I needed to reinstall some core bits, and downloaded the web controls (current install) from the site. (This is a DNN 4.5 site I'm working on).

I didn't realize this was not a standard DNN install package (and you really need to say that up-front, guys). I used the module manager to install it. This proceeded and did something, and then got an error.

Now for the bad part. Since then, any attempt to go into settings or the design area of any control (still as host), or to use any admin or host function, fails.

For example, trying use Edit Text, or Settings on a Text/HTML control causes the page to be displayed with this above the text control:

A critical error has occurred.
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Trying to use any admin/host function from the menu gives a page with a server-side error:

An error has occurred.
DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.PageLoadException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at DotNetNuke.Framework.DefaultPage.Page_Init(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.OnInit(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Page.OnInit(EventArgs e) at DotNetNuke.Framework.PageBase.OnInit(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

I desparately need to continue the development, but can't. It would be very bad if I had to scrap all the work.

Is there some way to repair the installation? I can't tell you what happened exactly, but suspect it could be reproduced in a "sandbox" installation if you did what I did -- get the web controls install and try to install the zip file directly as if it were a module package.

NOTE: This is on a hosted site. I do have full access to the file system and can get directly to the database if need be.

I cannot directly install it, but they have a (somewhat dicey) install script I could possibly re-run, as long as my database remains intact and I don't lose much of the work done.

Any ideas?