It is broken. :p

Comes up with a message saying "An error occurred in the database"

Only happens when you search something that returns no results.

No, I've had the same problem, and it's happened when I know there should have been results.

I've had this, and i'm fairly sure it happens when you set it to '5 results per page', and search for something that returns heaps of results, I don't think it can put in that many pages. So change it to '25/50 results per page', that always seems to fix it for me.

Nope. Did a quick search for "socceroos" with it set to 50 results per page, and it still comes up with the same message.

Maybe it's just that the percentage of results is disproportionate to how many you've told it to display on a page?