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Troubleshooting Common Solid Security Plugin Setup and Database Errors

49 threads Sep 9, 2025

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Many users of the Solid Security plugin (formerly iThemes Security) encounter a specific, frustrating error during installation, update, or activation: "Cannot run iThemes Security. Error encountered during setup. Please try deactivating and reactivating iThemes Security. Contact support if the error persists."

This message is a catch-all indicator that the plugin's setup routine has failed, often due to an issue with its database tables. Based on community reports, here are the most common causes and their solutions.

Why This Error Occurs

The Solid Security plugin relies on a set of custom database tables to store logs, lockouts, and other security data. This error typically appears when the plugin cannot create or alter these tables during its setup process. The underlying reasons can vary from insufficient database user permissions to corrupted tables or incompatible server configurations.

Common Solutions

1. Fix Database User Permissions

If the error message lists specific CREATE or ALTER command denials, the database user your WordPress site uses lacks the necessary permissions.

Solution: You must grant the CREATE, ALTER, and DROP permissions to your WordPress database user. This is typically done through your hosting provider's control panel (e.g., cPanel) or by contacting your host's support team and asking them to adjust the permissions for your database user account.

2. Repair or Delete Corrupted Tables

Errors mentioning that a table is "marked as crashed," "already exists," or has a missing file (like .MYD) point to database corruption.

Solution: Use a database management tool like phpMyAdmin to investigate.

  • Table already exists: Manually delete the mentioned Solid Security tables (e.g., wp_itsec_logs, wp_itsec_temp). The plugin will attempt to recreate them correctly upon reactivation.
  • Table is crashed: Use the "Repair table" function in phpMyAdmin on the affected table.
  • Missing file: Deleting the corrupted table and reactivating the plugin is often the most reliable fix.

Warning: Deleting tables will erase related logs and temporary data, but your core security settings are usually preserved elsewhere.

3. Address Character Set and Collation Issues

Errors about "Unknown character set" or "Unknown collation" (e.g., utf8, utf8mb4_unicode_ci) indicate your database server is outdated or doesn't support the character sets the plugin requires.

Solution: This is primarily a server-level issue.

  • For local/dev environments: Update your local database server (e.g., MySQL, MariaDB) to a more recent version that fully supports modern character sets.
  • For live sites: Contact your hosting provider. Explain that your database server does not support the utf8mb4 character set, which is a WordPress requirement since version 4.2. They need to upgrade the database server on their end.

4. Perform a Complete Clean Reinstall

If the above steps don't work, a deep clean is needed to reset the plugin's data completely. A simple deactivate-and-delete from the WordPress admin may not remove all database tables or options.

Solution:

  1. Deactivate and delete the Solid Security plugin from the WordPress Plugins page.
  2. Access your database via phpMyAdmin or a similar tool.
  3. Manually locate and delete all tables prefixed with {your_prefix}_itsec_ (e.g., wp_itsec_logs, wp_itsec_lockouts).
  4. Also, search the wp_options table (or wp_xx_options for multisite) for any options with the prefix itsec_ and delete them. Be very careful in this step.
  5. Reinstall a fresh copy of the Solid Security plugin from the WordPress repository.

Conclusion

The "Cannot run iThemes Security" error is almost always a database-related issue. The most effective troubleshooting path involves checking database user permissions, repairing corrupted tables, ensuring your database server is up-to-date, and, as a last resort, performing a complete clean reinstall of the plugin. If problems persist, your hosting provider can often provide valuable insight into server-specific limitations or errors.

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