Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in

Hello I'm not a PHP developer but a friend of mine is having problems so I'm trying to figure something out.

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in

This vague error occurs for 3 different scripts (trigger in red).

First script lib/db.class.php

  function Read($key) {
    global $ADODB_SESS_CONN, $ADODB_SESS_MD5;
    //echo "read<br>";
    $data = '';
    if ($ADODB_SESS_CONN) {
      $query = "select data from idx_sessions where sesskey = '$key' AND expiry >= " . time();
      $result = $ADODB_SESS_CONN->Execute($query);
      [COLOR="red"]if ($result->RecordCount()) {[/COLOR]
       $data = rawurldecode($result->Fields('data'));
      }
      $ADODB_SESS_MD5 = md5($data);
      $result->Close();
    }
    return $data;
  }

Code (markup):

Second script lib/misc.lib.php

  function GetWhosOnline($exp = 600) {
    global $dbConn, $whosonline;

    if (!empty($whosonline))
      $exp = $whosonline;

    $expired = time() - $exp;

    // get total users online
    $query   = "select data from idx_sessions where expiry > $expired
                order by expiry desc";
    $result  = $dbConn->Execute($query);

    $ret[0] = 0;
    $ret[1] = 0;
    $ret[2] = 0;
    $ip_arr = array();
    while (!$result->EOF) {
    [COLOR="red"]  $data = $result->Fields(data);[/COLOR]
      $data = urldecode($data);

      // parse session data
      $data = substr($data, 0, strlen($data) - 1);
      $str  = explode(";", $data);

      $dump = array ();

      foreach ($str as $key => $val) {
        $str1 = explode("|", $val);
        foreach ($str1 as $key1 => $val1) {
          if (preg_match("/s:/i", $val1))
            $dump[$vkey] = unserialize($val1);
          else
            $vkey = $val1;
        }
      }

      if (!in_array($dump[indexu_session_ip], $ip_arr)) {
        $ip_arr[] = $dump[indexu_session_ip];
        $username = $dump[indexu_session_username];
        if (!empty($username)) {
          $ret[] = $username;
          $ret[1]++;
        }
        else {
          $ret[2]++;
        }
        $ret[0]++;
      }

      $result->MoveNext();
    }

    // fix $_SESSION bug
    if ($ret[0] == 0) {
      $ret[0] = 1;   // total

      if (isset($_COOKIE['COOKIE_USERNAME'])) {
        $ret[1] = 1; // member
        $ret[3] = $_COOKIE['COOKIE_USERNAME'];
      }
      else
        $ret[2] = 1; // guest
    }

    return $ret;
  }

Code (markup):

Third script lib/link.class.php

     // pagination

      if ($this->paging) {
        if (empty($pg_which)) {
          $pg_which = 1;
        }
        $result                        = $dbConn->PageExecute($this->query, $pg_which, $this->pg_size);
      [COLOR="red"]  $this->record_count_of_display = $num_rows = $result->RecordCount();[/COLOR]
        $nav                           = new navigator;
        $nav->pg_size                  = $this->pg_size;
        $nav->href                     = $this->href;
        $nav->more_param               = $this->more_param;
        $nav->page_file                = $this->page_file;
        $nav->page_title               = $this->page_title;
        $nav->pg_which                 = $pg_which;
        $nav->rec_count                = $num_rows;
        $nav->init();
        $this->pagination              = $nav->print_all();
        $i                             = $nav->rec_start;
        $this->max_rows                = 100000;
      }
      else {
        $result                        = $dbConn->Execute($this->query);
        $this->record_count_of_display = $num_rows = $result->RecordCount();
        $i                             = 0;
      }

Code (markup):

If I comment out the bits triggering the error, things like captcha stop working. I'm guessing the script has trouble reading from the database. Any suggestions?

 

Oh I should add that the VPS these scripts are on ran out of inodes some time ago, I'm speculating that that might have something to do with it.