Quoting "Neil: esl-lounge.com" neil@esl-lounge.com:
OK, sorry to have bothered the mailing list with my noob stoopidity....as Jason so rightly said, I overwrote my old settings.php with the default one, without the db settings/password, etc.
This file should be set with read only privileges. That will prevent it from being overwritten without notice unless of course you copy over it with forced overwrite.
Earnie -- http://for-my-kids.com/