The Masterblock is corrupted. It is the database Masterblock that contains version information. Returning a 0 or other bogus value indicates a problem with the database itself.
In some occasions it has been observed that viruses and Ransomware attacks can also overwrite db files and cause error 44 with unexpected vales (e.g. negative values).
In this scenario a strings command output against the db files returns random unexpected characters when compared with files from an working database.
This is usually a sign that the db files are in a state that is unrecoverable. | 
