MySQL vs MariaDB should have no affect.
The reason I recommended what I did was your second post
Oh I forgot to add, when deactivating and deleting the plugin to try to reinstall, the plugin menu for ACF is still on the sidebar! Just the “Updates” options is removed for it, but I’m still able to go into the plugin. I checked the plugins folder too, it really has been removed.
This tells me that ACF is still installed somewhere that you don’t see it. This happens when ACF is installed as part of the theme or included on another plugin. If updates are not available this would also indicate that the free version of ACF is what is included, wherever it is included.
I do not think it is in the theme though because plugin are loaded first which should prevent the plugin in the theme from running.
In any case, for this to happen the ACF files have to exist and be loaded, so they are there somewhere, you just need to locate them.
The only other explanation could be that it’s installed as a mu-plugin, which I find highly unlikely, but not impossible.
