Thanks for the suggestion Sonyapiquete, I was able to copy over the wp-includes and wp-admin folders from a working blog to the non-working blog, this produced the ‘database requires updating’ screen upon logon attempt. After database update it seems to be working as intended. Will give it a try on my other failed blogs. For an added level of safety, I simply renamed the existing wp-includes and wp-admin to wp-includes-old and wp-admin-old, in the event the new versions produced the same error.
RH
