I tried to upgrade by copying the files over, assiging IUSR write privs, changing my web.config db entries to a copy of the production db, and disabling Ifinity.

When I hit default.aspx, i get a redirect to

/Default.aspx?error=Object+reference+not+set+to+an+instance+of+an+object.&content=0

Which tells me that something failed somewhere and when that something failed, an object that something else needed wasn't created.

It also tells me that somebody wrote some code with only minimal attention to error handling.   Of course there is nothing in the event log either.

Any suggestions?  Other than "use Joomla", that is?

IUSR, NETWORK SERVICE, AUTHENTICATED USERS, and EVERYONE  have write permissions on the directory and I get the same error...and absolutely nothing in the event log.

Can someone on the DNN core team please either learn how to use an error handler to provide useful error messages or stop doing it entirely? 

A useful error would be something like:  "Error: problem executing stored procedure 'sp_whatever'. cannot find 'sp_whatever'" .

Just barfing the whole stack trace would be a lot better than this. That I can figure out, but not telling me where the most generic of all dot net errors happened is totally unhelpful.