Thread

I just upgraded a site from 1.6.9 to 2.1.4b and I get the following error:

Site Error: Unable to Load Site Preferences; Invalid Preference Data

I’ve seen other threads on this topic but saw no solutions offered, at least not that I could see. I’ve been through the same paces as everyone else; reinstalling, backing up from a previous database, nothing has worked. Is there another way to address this issue that I haven’t seen yet?

I was able to get my site working again by taking the following steps:

I installed a virgin copy of EE 2.1.4 on the same server (with a different root directory) using a new database
I used phpmyadmin to copy all the values of the exp_sites database table
I pasted those values into the corresponding exp_sites table in the site I’m upgrading, replacing whatever was in there previously

The site worked again!

Then I simply reset some of the preferences I needed to get the old site back to the way it was before and everything was fine.

I noticed that the updater didn’t seem to touch the previous preferences because they were in normal text and EE 2.x preferences are in Base64.

Oh, and of course delete the extra virgin copy of EE you pulled the prefs. out of. 😉

Yes, it looks like you may have damaged the serialized array somehow. So, you’re good now, I understand?

So far, so good…

Excellent. Please don’t hesitate to post again as needed.