I seem to be going backwards in my DNN installation.. 

First off, I no longer can seem to access my host pages pages with my host account, it still lets me in the admin pages.

All my page permissions are unchecked (not locked) .. and it doesn't seem I can set them at all, even when I specifically check them and try to do an update.  So adding new pages seems to leave them in Admin Only views

Registration displayed only "This account doesn't exist" .. for non-logged in users.

Is this the point now where I should roll back to 5.5.1? .. I'm at my ends on this one, I've been working on this for a week plus, between hosting site issues and 5.6.1 seemingly being "a little buggy" .. 

or is this all related to something I can fix yet?

Ok original site was 5.1.2

backed up DB on hosting provider and copied it down 

copied down source files from hosting provider to be on my localhost dev machine

restored DB, modified connnections string .. and got home page to display on local host  (though some postbacks and menu wouldn't work)

Following the Upgrade path listed here: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/W...

Installed DNN upgrade 5.4.4 .. all successes once I got past a couple compile errors on missing name space System in side of Chat

Installed DNN upgrade 5.5.1 .. all successes ... at this point menu was working was able to log in

Installed DNN upgrade 5.6.1 .. all successes after I got past another missing system namespace in Effority user manger mod

As for mods installed.. all the core projects that was part of the system back in 4.7 i guess, before they became individual installs, plus a few 3rd party mods, most not even utilized that much much

After installed all the mods, and clicking around on local host, I took my 5.6.1 DB back up and restored to back to the hosting provider, 

ftp'd all the code in the dnn directory back up to the hosting provider (deleted everything there first)

And the website came back up, 

Tried to create a new portal (hence the start of this long process as the old code wouldn't do it) and the new portal displayed, but had no menu items, but one could see references to the pages at the bottom of the site, was having post back problems so could't get much further there .. I had generated the portal using the "portal template" system

opted to change the new portal over to an existing portal that had most of what I wanted on it anyways, was able to get in, update all the DNN modules the the lastest versions, installed a new skin.. when I tried to add a new page, this is where I noticed all the permissions were unchecked.  I could create the pages, but nothing I checked "stuck"... and the pages would only be "admin only" viewable

after a day of trying to configure a forms module I had. but found that the capicha wasn't working, part of the mods recommended trouble shooting steps was to turn it on for registration / log in  to see if it was a DNN problem.

At that point, I lost the ability to get to the registration page, now only get: This account doesn't exist

I had also turned on the require valid profile for registration option.

I have since turned them all back to the original settings and I'm still not getting to the registration process.  It was also after this, that I noticed I could no longer click on the "host" link in the control pannal as all it did was take me back to the web site "home" page

Is there more info you need?

The first place to start is your missing host pages.

Do you have access to your database?  If so - run a query on the tabs table in the database.
You will most likely find that the hosts menu records no longer have a portalid set to NULL 

SELECT *
FROM         Tabs
WHERE     (TabPath LIKE '//Host/%')

This should show you the host tabs -  if the PortalId column for any of the rows is any value other than NULL that is the first problem.

UPDATE Tabs
   SET [PortalID] = NULL
   WHERE     (TabPath LIKE '//Host/%')

Should allow you to again have access to your host pages.

Westa