Title: Deactivating plugin broke admin Last modified: January 16, 2017 --- # Deactivating plugin broke admin * Resolved [ceophoetography](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ceophoetography/) * (@ceophoetography) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/) * Greetings: * When I deactivated Pretty Link Lite 1.7.2 (because I intended to update to 2.0.2 and have learned it’s usually better to deactivate a plugin before updating, because WP will refrain from reactivating it if it would cause a fatal error), I immediately got an Internal Server Error [how ironic! 🙁 ]. Only the admin is broken. The website is still functional and shows me as logged in. * I have tried checking the .htaccess and disabling all plugins, but neither allows me to access `wp-admin`. * How do I solve this? I need administrative access. Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total) * Plugin Author [cartpauj](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cartpauj/) * (@cartpauj) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8661708) * This still happens even when Pretty Link is disabled? * You may want to check your webserver/php error logs and see if there’s any clues in there. Your web host should be able to tell you where the logs are stored. * Let me know what you find. * If you’re certain in Pretty Link, then delete its folder in /wp-content/plugins/** pretty-link** and see if you can access the admin then. * Thread Starter [ceophoetography](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ceophoetography/) * (@ceophoetography) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8661876) * I was in the plugin screen, and when I clicked “Deactivate” under Pretty Link, I got an Internal Server error and haven’t been able to access wp-admin at all. My server log hasn’t been updated/modified since 2014. I tried renaming the plugins folder and the pretty-link folder. Neither was successful in restoring administrative access. * Plugin Author [cartpauj](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cartpauj/) * (@cartpauj) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8662440) * There must be another log file located somewhere else then that will have some errors in it hopefully. You might want to reach out to us directly from our sales form here: [https://prettylinkpro.com/contact/](https://prettylinkpro.com/contact/) * Thread Starter [ceophoetography](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ceophoetography/) * (@ceophoetography) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8662540) * The problem appears to be a (sudden) plugin conflict. I don’t know if Pretty Link is even involved. As renaming the plugins folder did nothing, I had to use phpMyAdmin to disable all of the plugins. I’ve been reactivating them one at a time to try to locate the offender. * I have looked at the CGI errors log, which seems to suggest that the Social Networks Auto Poster plugin may be the culprit. That’s one that’s back-end only. I would think that any plugin that affects the front end would knock out the website as well as the administrative end. * Thread Starter [ceophoetography](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ceophoetography/) * (@ceophoetography) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8662595) * I’ve done some experimenting. With Pretty Link active, I could activate the NextScripts Social Networks Auto Poster (SNAP) plugin; I would only get the 500 if I then deactivated the Pretty Link plugin. With SNAP inactivated, I was able to deactivate Pretty Link with no problem. I was able to deactivate a different plugin with SNAP active. Bizarre. * Thread Starter [ceophoetography](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ceophoetography/) * (@ceophoetography) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8662617) * For the next step in my cyber-detective work, I’ve deactivated all of my plugins except for Maintenance Mode (so that I can have the site in maintenance mode while I go through all of this), Pretty Link, and SNAP. I deactivate Pretty Link to see if it triggers the 500. It does not. So then I add additional active plugins until I can figure out which third plugin contributes to the conflict. * Plugin Author [cartpauj](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cartpauj/) * (@cartpauj) * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8666107) * Let me know what you find out. I’ve deactivated multiple versions of pretty link on a handful of my developments sites and cannot duplicate any site errors at all. Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total) The topic ‘Deactivating plugin broke admin’ is closed to new replies. * ![](https://ps.w.org/pretty-link/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=2503434) * [PrettyLinks - Affiliate Links, Link Branding, Link Tracking, Marketing and Stripe Payments Plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/) * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/#faq) * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pretty-link/) * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pretty-link/active/) * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pretty-link/unresolved/) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pretty-link/reviews/) ## Tags * ["internal server error"](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/internal-server-error/) * [wp-admin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp-admin/) * 7 replies * 2 participants * Last reply from: [cartpauj](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cartpauj/) * Last activity: [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/deactivating-plugin-broke-admin/#post-8666107) * Status: resolved