Help, My Wallet crashed while synching, won't reopen

[Nat Philosopher]

What do  I do now? I use Bitcoin-Qt. Encrypted. I had just sent a bitcoin and it was synching. The computer froze, and when I restarted it, Bitcoin-Qt won't reopen. It almost comes up and tries to synch and then crashes. I had a backup on flash from before this latest attempt to send and and synch. Can I restore from that? Mac OS.x.10.7.5

[Nat Philosopher]

My Bitcoin-Qt seems to be version 0.3.666-beta. I see that purple news above.  Is that part of the problem?
Should I try downloading a new version? But if I do, can it load my backup?
I'd really be grateful for informed advice.

[RagnarDanneskjold]

help here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=151831.0

[bitpop]

Delete the database, everything but wallet.dat

[Nat Philosopher]

If I delete everything but wallet.dat, should I try to download an updated version before trying to restart or is it safer to try to restart with the version I have? 
Thanks much.

[Nat Philosopher]

OK, Thanks very much, I did delete everything but wallet.dat and restarted, and it seems to be working so far (busily trying to synch).
Here's my question now: before it was saying (when I look at "About Bitcoin-Qt") that it was version 0.3.something or other.
Now that I deleted everything and restarted, About is saying its 0.8.1
I thought it (from an answer somewhere else) that Bitcoin-Qt wouldn't do an auto-update?

Is this normal?

[Foxpup]

OK, Thanks very much, I did delete everything but wallet.dat and restarted, and it seems to be working so far (busily trying to synch).
Here's my question now: before it was saying (when I look at "About Bitcoin-Qt") that it was version 0.3.something or other.
Now that I deleted everything and restarted, About is saying its 0.8.1
I thought it (from an answer somewhere else) that Bitcoin-Qt wouldn't do an auto-update?

Is this normal?

You must be mistaken. There was never a version 0.3.666 of Bitcoin-Qt (the latest version 0.3.x was 0.3.24) and versions prior to 0.4.0 did not support encryption. If your wallet was encrypted, you were definitely not using version 0.3.something. Bitcoin-Qt certainly does not auto-update; you were most likely using 0.8.1 all along and got confused about the version number somehow.