wp_options table severely broken, already tried most

Hi,

I have a severe problem with wp_options table I am stuck with and found no solution yet. I use WP 3.1.1 with WPML for multilanguage support.

The problem:

I develop on local VM, with the DNS mapped via hosts-file, so I can migrate the WP-DB 1:1, as often done before.
The problem I am facing now is the wp_options table is broken. I cannot import the sqldump on the destination host.
All posts are properly displayed, the sidebar menu and widgets do not work (from a first quick visual inspection)

How can I track down which specific entries are problematic?
I also tried exporting via mysqldump/mysql and phpMyAdmin. Importing on the destination live host is only possible via Webhoster-Interface phpMyAdmin.
All other tables were imported without any problems.
The WP-Options table I exported with all recommended options (backticks for table-identifiers, UTF-8 ex+import…), also tested in ANSI-SQL-Format and others and did a XML-export. All cannot be properly imported into the new DB. I got some more entries properly imported via XML-ex/import.

It is NOT this error, which is easy to fix:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/error-establishing-a-database-connection-171

But my understanding of the DB is: if it’s inside, it should be able to get out of it, if the DB/table itself is not broken, only single entries.
What do you propose? creating a script exporting each line or range of lines and importing on same server in different newly created table just for testing? then take the working entries and migrate?

# SQL: CREATE TABLE wpcms_options_backup SELECT * FROM wpcms_options;

This works fine on the same VM, can I migrate this via mysqld across the servers? This would presumably solve the problem.

works on same server
mysqldump –user=xxx –password=”xxx” –max_allowed_packet=12M –default-character-set=utf8 [–add-drop-table] wpcms wpcms_options > table-wpcms_options.sql

## THEN TO IMPORT:
mysql -v –user=xxx –password=”xxx” –default-character-set=utf8 wpcms < table-wpcms_options.sql

What is the best way to manage to migrate/regenerate the options-table on the live server?
Deactivating all plugins (is complete plugin uninstallation also required?)? Are usually also other settings than plugin/theme-configurations inside this table?

Then it is the problem of a plugin to track down, maybe it’s just a serialized string missing a quote close or so.
Is there some JSON-/syntax-checker available?

Does it help or can it do any harm to include in wp-config:
define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, TRUE);

on the development server (SRC)
and/or the live server (DEST).

AFAIK it only does: ANALYZE TABLE, REPAIR TABLE and OPTIMIZE TABLE
I run backWPup with these options daily, so this should not be required AFAICT.

I am stuck here and the timing is worst possible, I need to get the website up “yesterday”.
So any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Another topic: is the plugin working?
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-migrate-db/

I use it for several years now, without any problems (found), the benefit: It can also replace inside JSON-encoded/serialized data.