Strange. Just to add a data point:
I had a computer that wasn't used for a long time, and it still had kstars 3.3.9 installed. That one always gave me errors when trying to update data files. I just updated that to 3.6.3 (recent git). Starting it, it would ask me if it should convert database files to new format, which I OK'ed.
After that KStars->Data->Updates->Update Comets Orbital Elements succeeded, and then I could search (and find) C/2022 E3 ZTF.

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