Incorrect key file for table - CAUSE and SOLUTION

[MjrPayne]

Last night I upgraded MySql from 4.X to 5.1 and everything was fine on all my databases (my hosting servers) with the exception of SMF.
2 tables were corrupt and reporting "Incorrect key file for table 'smf_members'; try to repair it".
Standard repair techniques failed and gave the same error.
The 2 tables are smf_boards and smf_members.

I got the most recent backups of the database and extracted mydata_smf1.sql and...

• Renamed the two corrupt tables to smf_members_BAD and smf_boards_BAD
• Look for the 2 sections that create and populate these tables and delete everything else.
• Run the sql queries in phpmyadmin
• Tested the forum
• Deleted/Dropped smf_members_BAD and smf_boards_BAD

Everything works fine.

I hope this helps people and saves a lot of headaches.

[JimM]

Welcome to SMF.

Thanks for posting this.  I'll mark it as solved as you posted your own solution.