Fatal Error

It may be that your old host had php set up differently, allowing longer-running scripts, or the new host has it set too long for a timeout that they have elsewhere. (Or the server may be somewhat overloaded.)

On your Wordfence Options page, try setting the “Maximum execution time for each scan stage” to a lower amount — usually a minimum of 15 is best, but you may be able to go higher, depending on the current setting.

More details on the max execution time are here:
My scans don’t finish. What would cause that?

Let us know if this helps or if you still have trouble.

-Matt R

That got me past line 161 but now I am getting “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 71 bytes) in /home/rockyfor/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 2258.”

Should I attempt to increase the memory allocation (256 MB requested) or something else?

Yep — if you increase the memory on the Options page, that will usually help for the new error you got. If the hosting provider has a lower limit, you may need to ask them to increase it on their end. (What they would need to change is the “memory_limit” option in the file “php.ini”.)

If you can’t get them to increase it, you may be able to disable some options like “Scan image files as if they were executable” (usually only needed for cleaning tough hacks), or removing large backup files from the server, if you have a backup plugin that stores large files on the server. You could also exclude backup files from scans using the field “Exclude files from scan that match these wildcard patterns”, if removing them isn’t practical.

Depending on where it is getting stuck, removing spam comments may help. In some cases, Wordfence is using little memory, but most of the limit is taken up by another plugin. I haven’t seen many of these lately, but sometimes disabling another plugin will help (especially if you have extra plugins enabled you don’t really need anymore.)

-Matt R