Moved forum to new host company's server - not working! Please help!

[tananaBrian]

Hi,

Our website just got updated (was Drupal, now is ASP.NET) and we had to change hosting companies as a result.  I tried to move our forum from the old server to the new:

- Backed up dbase (SQL) format from old server, successfully restored on the new
- Zipped up the ~/forum folder on old, unzipped it into ~/forum on the new

The forum is mostly working, but several issues exist:

- Attachments and images can't be found (404 error)
- Warning at top of page that themes path is wrong etc.
- Error log shows broken path errors and if you view a topic with attachments, they are indeed broken (and so are avatars etc), example:

"Type of error: 'General'"
Path: http://www.mydomain.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=107;attach=219


All the issues look like file path and permissions issues, yet I've gone through the whole directory tree and made everything read/write.  If I use what the repair_settings.php file says are the correct paths, they include the drive letter and absolute path ... like "H:\\root\www\domainname\forum\themes".  The URL settings in the repair_settings.php page seem fine, but if I try to use the full H: absolute paths, the forum breaks and says "unable to load ... error_template.php" or something like that.  If I use paths such as "\domainname\forum\themes" alone, then the forum works but the issues above remain.

Other interesting issues:

- Click Admin and look at the Support Information block.  Correctly shows SMF 2.0.11, but Current SMF Version says "??" and the Live from Simple Machines... block says "You  are unable to connect to simplemachines.org's latest news file.
- Tried downloading the 2.0.12 update as a zip, but the package manager claims it is empty when I try to upload it. (?)  It's not empty...
- If I go to Routine Maintenance and manually run the 'Check all files against current versions' task,  it returns correct version info for the installed forum, but all '??' responses for 'Current Version'.

So... to me, it looks like the database and connection to it work fine, hence the content.  I think there is some kind of file or folder permissions issue, but cannot find it.  My hosting company, SmarterAsp.Net says "go see your developer".  Well ...I AM the developer and I'm lost!  For what paths to use in the settings, they just said "you should  not have to use absolute paths" but didn't give me an example.  I'm about out of ideas... Has anyone here moved their forums from an Apache server to a Windows/IIS server and got it to work? 

Thanks in advance... sorry if there's an obvious answer and I'm just not seeing it...

Brian

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Per your other thread, run repair_settings.php.