Resolving the infamous "One or more field types are not installed properly" error

14 months ago we migrated SP 2007 data to SP 2010.

Within the past couple of weeks, I created a new site on one of the migrated site collections.

Yesterday, the developer attempted to turn on the site's sharepoint server publishing feature.

He got the "One or more field types are not installed properly. Go to the list settings page to delete these fields." error.

He comes to me because he has no idea what that error means. I search the web and see a variety of things it could be.

So I take a look at the first description - take a look at the Relationships List list to see if it has a GroupID column instead of a GroupGUID column.

I don't find such a list on the site - but I do on the site collection. And in fact, the site collection's Relationships List list has the GroupID column.

I look at several postings which all say:

disable the site collection feature, remove the column, re-activate the feature.

However, this is my production system. What I have not yet seen is any mention of what impact on users of the site collection taking this action will have.

Is it safe to deactivate the feature, remote the list, activate the feature?  Could taking these steps break someone's site or cause something they are doing to fail?

Is there a safer action I could take that would result in the fixing this? 

Thank you!