Jules I tried to reply to your most recent message, however, im getting an unable to send message for 4426 seconds, which equals to well over an hour, so ill just post here.
Actually, the DB that I got from winCVS was the problem for me in regards to the zones starting and stopping. Im trying to remember where I got the file, however it was just 1 file that I sourced in, it may have been on code.google.com, but im not positive.
I zipped up a copy of the file (again im not positive where I got it), and you can download it if you like. It compressed up to 13 megs, but will uncomprss to over 85 megs. Here is the link:
http://tomahawkeer.homelinux.org/db_peq/peqdb.zip
FYI, I tried your plugins idea (for my quest problem), and while I did not have all of the files in the plugins folder that I should have, I copied them there, and I still am not able to hail NPCs or get quests from them (even after restarting the server). I must be missing something else still.
Let me know if this file helps or not.