[ryan]

Well I figured out my problem and of course it was just one of those dumb mistakes. If you notice in my code above i have "products.fulldesc" but it should be "products.fulldescr". That's what you get when you change two things at once. So if anyone is interested here is how I modified the search box code (atleast the query in search.php) "selGenre" is the name of my drop down box.

if ($selGenre == 'all'){
$search_query = "(products.product like '%$substring%' or products.descr like '%$substring%' or products.productcode like '%$substring%' or products.param05 like '%$substring%' or products.fulldescr like '%$substring%') and categories.category like '$search_category%' and products.forsale='Y' group by products.product";
#echo $selGenre;
}
else {
$search_query = "(products.product like '%$substring%' or products.descr like '%$substring%' or products.productcode like '%$substring%' or products.param05 like '%$substring%')  and products.param04 like '$selGenre%' and categories.category like '$search_category%' and products.forsale='Y' group by products.product";
}

In order for the pages beyond the first page of results you also need to change this code on search.php:

$smarty->assign("navigation_script","search.php?substring=".urlencode($substring)."&in_category=$in_category&selGenre=$selGenre");