Weird Problem

Hi everyone, First, let me explain I am a very knowledgable php developer. I'm not someone trying to write their first script. I have been working on a very large and complex problem for some time now when it suddenly stopped working. I did not change anything in any configurations or edit any code that would have affected how my database functionality class would function. But, all of my connections started to bomb out. Follows are the entire contents of a file simp.php (minus the line numbers): 1 <? 2 3 $db = mysql_connect("localhost", "web", "pw") || print "error connecting ".mysql_error()." ".mysql_errno(); 4 mysql_select_db("surveys"); 5 6 $result = mysql_query("select * from attract") || print "error querying ".mysql_error()." ".mysql_errno(); 7 8 $i = 0; 9 while ($row = mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("select * from attract"))){ // && ($i++ < 5)){ 10 echo $row[0]." ".$row[1]."<br>"; 11 } 12 ?> Please note that the user web@localhost identified by pw has permissions to select from the table attract. Here is what I have identified so far: A - If I use $result in mysql_fetch_array() line 9, I get the error: Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in simp.php3 on line 9 But if I use the statement mysql_query("select * from attract") in its place, the loop (although infinite) will produce expected results, ie print out the first and second columns of the first row of the table infinitely. So basically, I would conclude the life of the variable result is terminiating before I can use it. Why, I don't have a clue. B - Being tired of an infinite loop in my investigation, I added line 8 and I placed the statement && ($i++ < 5) inside the while loop condition. Now, only the <br> and spaces from line 10 will print, not the actual values of the $row array. The output is <br> <br> <br> <br> <br>, with no values from the table attract. This is where I stand now, completely flabberghasted and nearly insane. Can anyone shed any light on this before I have to commit to bringing down the webserver while I reinstall php4. (oh, btw I am running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) PHP/4.0.4pl1 on Red Hat 6.2 (I hate redhat, but the bossman says its better supported than slakware. bah.)) Thank you all for your help. steve