<p>A couple of other members of the community (myself included) ran into this recently. We were unable to figure out what was causing it, but we were able to work around it by just trying the upgrade again. The easiest way to do that is to restore to the backup immediately before your upgrade and try again. (By the way, you should create a backup before you upgrade! :-) )</p><p><br></p><p>See here: https://chat.rockrms.com/channel/troubleshooting?msg=slack-C2LSLJPTM-1544659005-090900<br></p>

<p>Unfortunately, I'm not sure if restoring the backup will work this time as we have had a number of services since the time I initiated the upgrade, so we have attendance records, financial batches, communications, etc. that would be lost or would have to be rebuilt somehow.&nbsp; Is the error something that can be "reset" using a SQL query or something "simple" like that?</p>

<p>The only other way I know of to do it without rolling back is this (there may be a simpler way to fix this, but I don't know what it is. This only takes about an hour):</p><p>1) Make a backup of your site and DB, make a note of your current Rock version<br></p><p>2) Delete your Rock installation (not your DB, just all the files in your www folder)<br></p><p>3) Re-install Rock to a fresh DB</p><p>4) Upgrade the fresh installation to your current version (in your case, 8.0)<br></p><p>5) Re-install any plugins/themes<br></p><p>6) Open web.ConnectionStrings.config and point Rock back to your original DB</p><p>7) Upgrade Rock as originally planned (in your case, to 8.1)<br></p>

<p>If the upgrade to 8.1 process failed, it would leave your system in an <i>unknown and unpredictable</i> state.  The fact that the app_offline.htm file was still present indicates the upgrade process did <i>not </i>complete successfully.  This means there are missing files (blocks, dlls, etc.), extra files, or the wrong versions of files on your Rock system.  Because the update failed, your Rock system is *<b>also missing the correct package files</b>* in the `App_Data\Packages` folder.  This is also one of the reasons why you are not able to perform another upgrade.  The files in that folder are critical and tell Rock what versions it needs to go fetch during an update -- and in your current state it is attempting to re-install very old components of Rock (version 1.0.12; that's super old) and that would be disastrous.
</p><p>Always remember to <b>take a backup</b> before an update. If you don't have a backup, Luke Bennett's idea is sound.  The only other thing that comes to mind would be hiring an expert to do some real surgery (and even then I'm not sure I would trust that person's work).  It would involve comparing all files on your system with a known set of files from a clean installation, followed by removing, replacing or adding files and checking the state of the __MigrationHistory table to see what was the last data migration that ran (data migrations are embedded inside the Rock.Migrations DLL).</p>

<p>UPDATE:&nbsp; Today I downloaded the latest version of Rock RMS and installed it on my backup server.&nbsp; I also exported my current database and used the dump to create a temporary database (to test with).&nbsp; I then pointed my new installation of Rock to the temporary database to see if everything would run.&nbsp; To my surprise, Rock started up just fine and I was able to do all of the normal activities we use Rock for; however, I'm noticing some exceptions being thrown when trying to send Communication test emails and SMSs (the error has to do with Foreign Key failures).&nbsp; So there are some database changes that are needed, but I'm not sure how to do that.&nbsp; Is there a SQL command that can be run to "upgrade" the 8.0 database to match the 8.5 code that is running?</p><p><br></p><p>I should add that I attempted to find a way to download version 8.0 of Rock, but couldn't find a link to download a previous version of the code.</p>

<p>UPDATE:&nbsp; I used a database compare tool to determine what's different between my production version of Rock RMS and the new 8.5 installation's version.&nbsp; I then manually created all of the SQL scripts to address all of the differences found in tables, indexes, foreign keys, stored procedures, functions, and views.&nbsp; I ran the SQL scripts against my production instance and then copied over all of the 8.5 website files to my production server.&nbsp; I recycled the application pool and brought up Rock.&nbsp; Everything appears to be working, but I have only performed limited testing at this point.&nbsp; I'll update the group if I run into any further problems and what steps I performed to correct them (or reach back out to ask for help).&nbsp; Thanks everyone!</p>

<p>Hi David, due to the way you put your environment back to v8.5, you should also confirm that your App_Data/Packages/ folder has the following items:
</p><ul><li>Rock.1.8.5.nupkg
</li><li>RockUpdate-1-8-0.1.8.0.nupkg </li><li>RockUpdate-1-8-1.1.8.1.nupkg </li><li>RockUpdate-1-8-2.1.8.2.nupkg </li><li>RockUpdate-1-8-3.1.8.3.nupkg </li><li>RockUpdate-1-8-4.1.8.4.nupkg </li><li>RockUpdate-1-8-5.1.8.5.nupkg&nbsp;</li></ul>

<p>Thanks, Nick.&nbsp; I confirmed...all of the packages that you listed are present in the directory.</p>