I know this is an old thread, but it shows up high in a Google search so maybe my findings will help someone.
I pulled my hair out over this one for a while because it seemed to just come and go. My only remedy in the past was to create a new Members List and delete the old one. That was until I discovered the following:
Say you have a field that is set to display in one of the columns in the Members List (on the List Management page). If you then unpublish that field in the Field Manager and then perform an Advanced Search, you will get this error. What makes it hard to track down is that if you don't have that same field set to display on a profile in the Field Manager, then you won't see it in the column settings on the "Edit Members List" page.
So the bottom line here is make sure before you unpublish a field or remove it from a profile, check to make sure you don't have it set to display in a Members List.
