Upgrade problems

I was running a 2 year old copy of Zencart and finally got around to upgrading a month ago. Evidentally, I did it wrong and once I found that I'd done it wrong, I can't get the new store to find the old database

What I did:

I bought a new MySQL database and named it something unique. Then, I uploaded all the files for the newest copy of zencart, installed it (not upgrade...my error in reading the instructions) and played around with it.

I've discovered by reading instructions that all the alterations I've made to the old store makes upgrading basically impossible or incredibly difficult because I was haphazardly changing files. That is fine to me losing the changes. But, I don't want to lose all the hundreds of customers' information and items in my store. So, in MySQL viewer, it appears that the old database is fine.

I deleted everything, followed the directions, changing the config.php file and tried to 'UPGRADE', but it doesn't give me that option.

I'm sure that I need to give more information to troubleshoot...but I don't know what....So, please help me figure out what I did wrong and then how to fix it.

Thanks
Tim

saliva:

I was running a 2 year old copy of Zencart and finally got around to upgrading a month ago. Evidentally, I did it wrong and once I found that I'd done it wrong, I can't get the new store to find the old database

What I did:

I bought a new MySQL database and named it something unique. Then, I uploaded all the files for the newest copy of zencart, installed it (not upgrade...my error in reading the instructions) and played around with it.

I've discovered by reading instructions that all the alterations I've made to the old store makes upgrading basically impossible or incredibly difficult because I was haphazardly changing files. That is fine to me losing the changes. But, I don't want to lose all the hundreds of customers' information and items in my store. So, in MySQL viewer, it appears that the old database is fine.

I deleted everything, followed the directions, changing the config.php file and tried to 'UPGRADE', but it doesn't give me that option.

I'm sure that I need to give more information to troubleshoot...but I don't know what....So, please help me figure out what I did wrong and then how to fix it.

Thanks
Tim

What version are you upgrading from and to? If it is something like 1.1 to 1.3 then I would do 1.1 to 1.2 and you should get the db upgrade option, then do it with 1.2 to 1.3.

saliva:

I deleted everything, followed the directions, changing the config.php file and tried to 'UPGRADE', but it doesn't give me that option.Hi Tim

To say you deleted everything sounds a bit sweeping and I'm not sure what you mean by it. You're also right that upgrading the code can be difficult if you've changed a lot of files and not kept track of the changes. But the good news is that as you're happy to let go of the code changes, and want to focus on preserving the customer and product info, the upgrade should be relatively painless. Much more so than you have experienced to date. Here's how:

1. Create a new database
2. Install an up-to-date version of Zen Cart, separate from your existing store (that will give you code, config files and populate the database.
3. Drop the database and replace it with a copy of your existing database given the same name (and user accesses) as the one you dropped. Do this right and it will be recognised by your config files, but will have old version data - that's what gets you the upgrade option.
4. Run the zc_install process in your browser and select upgrade. It will show you the versions that it is going to go through. As it's been a couple of years there will be a few, but it is designed roll through them in a single. You'll see a few warnings come up but that's normal and very unlikely to be a problem - they usually refer to tables that need to be there but were also included in an earlier step.

thanks!
most is back up and running