MySQL 4.0.17 data scrambles, not-null fields become null

[Phil Powell]

I'm having the most bizarre problem with PHP/MySQL that I've ever faced and it's an urgent matter (of course) to try to fix it ASAP.

We have one record inserted into a table with 75 columns, whereby half of the columns are not-null, but for some bizarre reason, the fields are null. The rest of the columns that are null are completely scrambled (e.g. "first_name" is in "address2", "fax" is in "url", "url" is in "last_name", etc.)

This just recently occurred and seems to have no history otherwise. It occurred sometime on Saturday when the record was inserted but logs indicate no unusual activity at that time.

Has anyone seen this before and found a way to prevent it from occurring again?

Thanx
Phil