CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm running CiviCRM 1.8.11536. I am having problems with an online contribution page which I think are related to some edits I made in the civicrm DB. When I try to submit payment, I generate the following:
Sorry. A non-recoverable error has occurred.
Could not find valid Key

With backtrace:
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Error.php, backtrace, 251
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Controller.php, fatal, 175
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Controller.php, key, 129
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Contribute/Controller/Contribution.php, __construct, 57
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Contribute/Invoke.php, __construct, 120
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Component.php(183) : eval()'d code, main, 1
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Component.php, eval, 183
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Invoke.php, invoke, 144
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/modules/civicrm/drupal/civicrm.module, invoke, 319
, civicrm_invoke,
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/includes/menu.inc, call_user_func_array, 418
/var/www/virtual/gcmas.org/htdocs/index.php, menu_execute_active_handler, 15

The page was working fine before I took it upon myself to remove some test entries from Contacts and Members. I was having problems with some of them doing it through the CiviCRM interface, so I did it at the DB level. Lesson learned.

I'm wondering if the easiest way to fix this is to simply reset the tables for Contacts, Members, etc. (and all associated contributions). If so, I would appreciate any guidance as to which tables need to be dropped and recreated. Everything loaded on the site is a test entry, so I don't mind losing any of them. However, I don't know of any way to back up my settings, so I don't want to do a completely clean install and lose all of those.

I'm grateful for any suggestions. (Besides "Don't muck around in the DB anymore."  )

note that this destroys ALL the current civicrm data in your database

Does this include all the changes I've made in "Administer CiviCRM" (e.g. custom profiles, contribution pages, etc.)?

If so, can I manually edit the civicrm_41.mysql and civicrm_data.mysql files so the only table drops/recreates are for contact/member/contribution info? Or alternatively, back up the tables which contain the profile/contribution page/etc. information?

Understood.
Is there any reference available as to what data is contained in each table?

That's what I was looking for. Thank you very much.