I am in the process of converting an older osC2.1 database to the latest osCMax2 database. I've got the data combined and loaded into the oscmax2 database, but there are many code errors. Any help is appreciated.

Catalog
1. PHP sessions were not working. The /tmp folder could not be found for some reason. I changed the sessions path in the configure.php to "mysql". It seemed to fix that error (although I don't want this setting to be permanent).
2. Now I am seeing this error at catalog/index.php: "Illegal template directory!". I found a solution on the forum, but it requires admin access...

Admin
1. Initially, I could not login to the admin. Turns out the "admin" table was empty. So I updated it with an email address and password. At first, this did not work (plus the password was not encryted in the database). So then I used the "forgot password" process and it worked. I was able to login.
2. However, I'm being taken directly to the admin account page (admin/admin_account.php), I guess to reset my password, and I am getting this sql error:
Code:
1064 - 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

select a.admin_id, a.admin_firstname, a.admin_lastname, a.admin_email_address, a.admin_created, a.admin_modified, a.admin_logdate, a.admin_lognum, g.admin_groups_name from admin a, admin_groups g where a.admin_id= 1 and g.admin_groups_id= 

[TEP STOP]
Need help fixing this SQL error so I can continue moving forward.

Thanks,
C