Thanks, Dhrup, this problem has just cropped up but cheap shared hosting is probably right. They say they can't replicate my problem on their end (fairly frequently can't connect to DB/error 2002). rj that would be webhostingpad. No, spam hasn't been a problem as my community is small and I have put up barriers such as site access with password and admin approval needed for registration.

Lately I updated to 1.7.7 and that seemed to go smoothly. How about: there is a plugin problem which I am still investigating by disabling and checking, .htaccess in root (Elgg in subdomain) and possible conflict, or hacked which I see no evidence of.

Thanks, guys! Finally today things seem resolved. Can't break the site (yet). Host is fuzzy why the problem though. For those in the future it (can't connect to DB/mysql error 2002) does point to a MySQL configuration issue and does not appear to be caused by Elgg.

2002 *IS a MySql issue.. not "pointed to" ;-)