Can anyone make sense of this?

alternatively, find the option where the loaded plugins are at and reset it

I won’t ask HOW to backup my mysql db but can you point me in the right direction on how to do a backup with selective tables?

Follow the phpmyadmin instructions at the following link, and when you get to step 1, only select the table(s) that you want to.

https://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/backup/

yea that would be but I don’t have it on my dedicated server.

I have to read how to do it from the command line using mysqldump I guess from what I’m researching.