Please help -- begging. Ipowerweb trashed my board, please!

Hi all/Craven,
Yeah, I know. I only come around when i need something. Guess that makes me like family, right?
I'm really desperate, and Craven, I think you can fix this in 5 minutes, versus the more than 12 hours that ipowerweb blew -- including 3 tech support guys.
Here's the story:
last night, my board worked fine. this morn, dead.
I'm getting the dreaded phpbb: critical error - could not connect to the database.
i did nothing between going to bed and waking up (well, except for a trip to the bathroom).
ipowerweb claims they upgraded their phpmyadmin or mysql somewhat recently. regardless, i believe that i am touching the database -- when i fool with config.php i get differing errors. i'm wondering if i could have been hacked, and my database password was changed?
the errors don't change when i use different passwords -- however if i specify say, mysql4 instead of mysql then i get a whole slew of different errors.
any chance you can help out a poor bum? pleez?
i haven't changed the board's pw since i last begged you for help and i'm of course happy to privately send to you again.
i'd really appreciate any help you're able to give, and i'll happily contribute to your board in a tangible way (i.e. paypal) in gratitude.
any help very gratefully appreciated. please.
cheers,
Gary
p.s. my dead board is www gadgetaddict com