Upgrading Drupal

I upgraded my site from 6.10 to 6.11.
However, there was one issue.

I followed the upgrade procedure as recommended in upgrade.txt

In step 10, I run http://www.mysite.com/update.php
I received a message:
Operations on Unicode strings are emulated on a best-effort basis. Install the PHP mbstring extension for improved Unicode support. (Currently using Unicode library Standard PHP)
I clicked Continue

The update progress screen
- Overview: everything looks ok
I clicked Continue

- Select updates:
I had a look at Select Versions
- only System module showed 6050
- all other modules showed "No updates available"
I clicked Update

The progress bar runs, runs, runs ...
I did not know how stop the process
I waited, waited, then I clicked Mozilla's Go Back button

The site was still operational
I clicked "Administer" and a warning message said something like "DB is not compatible with this version; run update immediately"
I clicked the update link that was offered in the warning message and was returned to the update progress screen
- Overview: click Continue
- Select updates:click update
The progress bar runs, runs, runs ...

I clicked Go Back
run http://www.mysite.com/update.php again
this time I have chosen manually "No updates available" for System module
The progress bar again runs, runs, runs ...

I clicked Go Back

Hey guys,

http://mysite.com/ opens fine, this is the main drupal page.
http://mysite.com/anything brings a 404 error
http://mysite.com/?q=anything brings up any page you want it to without error.

After a fresh install of server OS and services, I restored the database and files. This problem showed up and after a while of not being able to fix it I just did the update that broke the server in the first place. Now I'm on the newest 5x and this problem remains. I've taken a look at the htaccess and it seems fine (I tried the original htaccess and the default one that came with the installation, neither fix this problem.)

Is this an httpd config problem? I really need it fixed, it's the only thing stopping the site from coming back online. Also, I checked functionality and it seems the installation/update is complete, it is only this setting it back.

this is the running htaccess file:

# Protect files and directories from prying eyes.

Order allow,deny


# Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Make Drupal handle any 404 errors.

I did upgrade from drupal 5 to the latest version of drupal 6

cron used to rum smooth

now i get a message with html content of my website content

and it says in the log entry

cron did not run 3 days ago

even if i visit the cron.php manually

cron did not run

everything was fine before upgrading

I have a fair amount of content on a D6 site that was my first Drupal site. Much of the site is a mess full of beginner mistakes and hosted on a shared server that isn't the best.

I have since learned much and am building the site the right way, planned, organized and lots of new additions (social media stuff, galleries, profiles etc.) and on a better hosting platform optimized for Drupal. I'm not very experienced with databases. I do have access to DBs on both hosts. The old host has phpMyAdmin, the new host requires I use SSH which I'm just starting to learn.

I have religiously followed the upgrading instructions and have created a new installation. Then, when I tried to restore the database from a saved one, here is what I get:

user warning: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1 query: CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `access` ( in /home/pz29/public_html/cvillebiotechconsult/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 128.

And this repeats about 30 times on the page.

I'm a bit out of my league in terms of coding... a designer afterall. :)

So, I attempted to update to Drupal 6.11, by carefully FTPing the appropriate files, but now the site has disappeared and I'm not able to run the update script. The settings.php is correct, and I didn't copy over any of the custom files. Any help for this beginner would be much appreciated.