I have been tasked to upgrade a site from 4.8.2 to >= 5.x.x. I am not the developer and know very little about this site (or DNN for that matter!) This is the upgrade path I took thus far:

4.8.2 --> 4.9.5
4.9.5 --> 5.4.4

I do not have access to the SQL back-end (need to request other people make changes through the red tape jungle). Therefore, I have been performing in-line upgrades making backups of the assembly before and after each upgrade. I ran into a problem where I cannot access the Admin or Host menus after the first upgrade to 4.9.5 (no error messages during the upgrade). I was hoping it would be corrected in the next step, so I plunged into 5.4.4 (Web.Config reflects .NET 3.5 at this point). While the rest of the site looks and works as it should, I still cannot use the Admin or Host menus (sub-menus appear, but no cute icons anymore either). When I click on them, IE goes into an endless loop and FF returns a "The page isn't redirecting properly" error. I spent the last few hours clicking through the forums but none of the solutions see to work for me. It seems to be a skin issue, but I am a Server Admin, not a web developer or programmer!

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time,

Bob