Thank You Like - Recount very slow

[lost puppy]

I don't know if this would make a difference but I have 5 different databases on the server and can only look at one at a time (it won't let me even have 2 open in different tabs) ... would it think that I am trying to change them all?

I mean with the "INTO @exist" part of that query?

That part just assigns the result of the query into the variable @exist, so that it can be referenced later. Let's try to rule that part out as the cause of the error though by reducing the query down to this (same need for prefix replacement):

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM   information_schema.columns 
WHERE  table_schema = database()
       AND
       column_name = 'tyl_tnumtyls'
       AND
       table_name = 'YOURPREFIX_threads';

Does that still generate the error?

No, that works fine and returns a count of zero << if it is meant to do that??