Well hell... I don't know what I did but it worked.
I added the echo and that did nothing. I noticed that the query was to the showprivate.php file and not showmessage.php. So I added the echo to that one too and got nothing. So then I just went to the "clean" files that I downloaded with the upgrade software and re-installed those two files. VIOLA! ... all is well! Perhaps I missed one or two of those in the upload?!?!
I'm so damn tired I can't see straight...
Thanks for leading me in the right direction Josh... much appreciated!!
I'm off to bed...
