Database restoration to new installation giving problems

Version: 1.3.8a (Patched)
Addons: Stock by attributes ver. 1.4.9
Template Used: Blue Highlites with custom overrides to /includes/language/english/ and /includes/templates/
Web Host: Linux based

Okay here's the problem:

I had this online store installed in www.mysite.com/mystore This store was not up in the sense nobody knew of it so no transactions yet. Everything was fine except I had installed it in the default ISO_8859-1 encoding, which was giving me problems with special characters. I tried changing the encoding to UTF-8 but was only partially succesful; I was now able to give special characters, but ordinary product descriptions began showing silly characters for no reason.

I decided to try a new install with utf-8 character set.

Before I proceeded, I copied my previous installation to another directory on my server, say /public_html/myoldstore. I also did a backup of my_database.sql and saved it on my computer. Please keep in mind the collation of this database was already utf_general_ci

I did a new installation in /public_html/mystore/ which is working fine; encoded in utf-8 charset, as suggested at http://www.srw2d.com/content/english...-1-files-utf-8 I am not getting any of the previous problems. When installing, I used the same old database, i.e. my_database.sql.

Problem is even after restoring the database I backed up, my newly installed site www.mysite.com/mystore is neither restoring the previous settings nor showing any of the previous data. On the other hand, when I run www.mysite.com/myoldstore, it is working fine as before. Please advise where I have erred and what I need to do to get my data into my new installation? Should I create a new database and then import the backup into it?

Thanks,
Ijlal

Did you alter the file to reflect utf8??
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=26

kobra:

Did you alter the file to reflect utf8??
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=26

ijlal:

I did a new installation in /public_html/mystore/ which is working fine; encoded in utf-8 charset, as suggested at http://www.srw2d.com/content/english...-1-files-utf-8 I am not getting any of the previous problems. When installing, I used the same old database, i.e. my_database.sql.

Yes, I did, as is described at the link above. I made all those changes and Zen-cart installed perfectly. There are no issues with the encoding anymore.

The issue on hand is I cannot get the new installation to use the previous data. The backed up database gets imported without problems through phpMyAdmin but the data is visible neither in front or back offices. I did yet another installation, with a new database, but still the imported data does not show.

The issue on hand is I cannot get the new installation to use the previous data. The backed up database gets imported without problems through phpMyAdmin but the data is visible neither in front or back offices. I did yet another installation, with a new database, but still the imported data does not show.
Not on a live DB but one for use to convert only - -

Upload/import the previous data
Using phpmyadmin, shange the collation of the DB
Export this converted DB and try that in a test store set to UTF8