Having trouble getting out of 4.2.7

[RachelWright]

I am running 4.2.7 and would like to upgrade to 4.4 but I know (from upgrading previously) that it's best to go in small increments. I'm having trouble getting out of 4.2.7 at all.

When I upgrade to 4.2.16 the upgrade runs just fine but I have no Civi admin menu. I've tried cleaning my cache and rebuilding menus, no dice.

I did empty my templates_c directory prior to upgrade and after just in case.

Anyone have any suggestions? (I've also tried 4.2.8 and 4.2.9, they both show no menus as well. 4.3.1 and 4.3.5 fail to get past the upgrade script.)

[Hershel]

When you upgrade to 4.2.16 can you look for a JS error? In Firefox, use Firebug for that.

[RachelWright]

I ran the upgrade again, in Firefox with Firebug open. (I don't have a lot of experience debugging Javascript, so if I missing something I apologize.) No errors came up in the console, and all the POST commands for each database upgrade it went thru (from 4.2.7 up to 4.2.16) say OK. Is there something else I should be looking for in the console? Or if there are no Javascript errors, what else should I be digging into?

[Hershel]

After the upgrade, when you visit the CiviCRM home page, look for any JS errors and look for any not found files in the Net tab of Firebug.

[JohnFF]

Perhaps you could also see if there's anything in the logs?

Also, perhaps during the course of the upgrade some file permissions were changed? Maybe it's best to double check some of these.

Also, did you try clearing Joomla's cache? That seems like it could be a likely culprit here.

Do you have any custom extensions (or whatever Joomla's equivalent of plugins/modules is) that could be disabled?

[CiviTeacher.com]

I would upgrade in 3 steps:

Upgrade to 4.2.9 with Joomla first, avoiding 4.2.16.

Then 4.3.8

Then 4.4.5