Quick back story... 4-5 years ago I set up zencart. It's been very stable and I never had a single problem (thanks zencart team for making an awesome product!!). I didn't do any updates from the original v1.3.9h installation because I modified the master template files so much (I know... bad idea). And I don't have the time to constantly be patching and experimenting with the store.

I decided to update today to v1.5.4 and realized it would be better to just start from scratch. Except I'd love to use the old mysql database. I've done a significant amount of reading about the process and I was going to follow these steps posted by another user.

I backed up the original database using the export tool from phpmyadmin. I setup the new store in a directory off the root directory like the instructions in the other link mentioned. I walked through the setup, created a new database with my cpanel and linked it accordingly through the installer. But I believe I have hit a major stumbling block. The new v1.5.4 store is online and live in the temporary directory with a blank database but I've tried numerous times to use the import feature from phpmyadmin and it doesn't seem to actually import any of the old tables. It always says executed 391 queries. but the new database doesn't have any of the old data in it.

I've tried installing and using the sample database and importing the old database into the sample database but that didn't work...
I've tried installing and not using the original prefix from the original database but that didn't work.
I've tried installing and using the original prefix but that didn't work.

Here is the crazy question... Would it work, if I followed the link above and changed the configure.php files in v1.5.4 installation to reflect the old database credentials? I believe I would have to re-run the zc_install and do database only option after I changed the configure.php files no?

I want to upgrade to 1.5.4 but it seems I only have one working copy of the original database and I don't want to mess it up. Thoughts? I haven't played with the store in several years and I don't have a lot of time to constantly be messing with this stuff... I'm just worried about losing the products and customer info from the old database.