Ok, this appears to have been caused by dynamik 1.4.2 – I have just upgraded to dynamik 1.5 and it works.  Note it didn’t work just by upgrading to dynamik 1.5 – I had to uninstall, delete all the ‘sf’ tables, delete all the directories, re-install from scratch (again).  However it now works.

As we have said, many plugins needed updating to cope with WP 3.9.

This sounds more like an ordering thing. WordPress loads plugins in the order in which they have been activated and this can, sometimes, cause conflicts. Sometimes changing that order can resolve issues but that can be really hard to determine – sometimes more a matter of luck.

So what you have done is change the order which may actually have been the solution.

Unless there is actually some sort of extremely rare corruption in many of the plugin files there is absolutely no reason and nothing to be gained by reinstalling Simple:Press. The only thing it will change is the order that WP  loads plugins and that can be achieved simply by deactivating plugins and then reactivating them again.

But – as I said – ordering can be really hard to sort if causing a problem because often the permutations are just too big!