Shop has zen_ prefix but admin doesn't

[fearless359]

This issue was created in years past but just noticed as client wants to update product info now. The shop works fine. But the shop config file has the DB prefix of "zen_". Until now, I thought the admin worked fine. But since the admin config does NOT have a prefix, I now see that there are two complete sets of data tables; one with a "zen_" prefix and one without. To complicate further, it appears that all version updates that affect the database structure happened to the tables without a prefix. I say this because they have the character type of "utf8mb4" and key fields are all limited to varchar(191) as opposed to 255.

I tried a simple change to add the "zen_" prefix in the admin config file. But that causes the following error when the admin sign in is attempted:

WARNING: An Error occurred, please refresh the page and try again.If you were entering information, press the BACK button in your browser and re-check the information you had entered to be sure you left no blank fields.

I believe I want to keep the file content in the sets with the "zen_" prefix since that is where are the product and other information is. But I need to get around the sign in issue I have and also the likely issue that those tables have not been update for quite some time.

[mc12345678]

Make a complete backup of the database.

Suggest changing the admin folder's reference to use the same DB_PREFIX as the catalog side. Then run zc_install. Do not attempt to login to the admin until after the database upgrade. If the credentials to login to the database using the prefix are unknown, then would suggest using the admin password reset option of the following FAQ to set an admin profile/password after the file's prefix is updated and before attempting to use the zc_install process: https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?44

As to the message that was provided, please see this FAQ: https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php...-and-try-again

But I would say that probably have figured out that it is related to the database and it's current status related to the catalog side which should be resolved by the above.