delete_option and delete_post_meta not working

For some reason it seems that I can’t delete rows from the database on my server. I’m thinking it has to do with server configuration since the code works fine on my local installation, but I have no idea what server config would prevent a row from being deleted.

From testing, I know that the delete_option and delete_post_meta calls are running, they just return FALSE. In particular, delete_option gets hung up here:

$row = $wpdb->get_row( $wpdb->prepare( “SELECT autoload FROM $wpdb->options WHERE option_name = %s”, $option ) );

if ( is_null( $row ) )
return false;

Adding and changing database rows works fine.

Does anyone have any idea why this would happen?