Manual upgrade - big questions

[NNGNews]

We are through a manual upgrade from 1.4.7 to 1.6.11, lot of issues

I have two questions:

 

1) why shoud we restore the older files and folder version before execute the  "yourdomain/install/upgrade/upgrade.php" script ?

because I think it should be execute after the new version has uploaded or I'm wrong ? so I think we should only restore the database or not ?

 

2) Instead of going through this bloody mess, what if we install a clear new version (1.6.xx) and import our images and data in the new database, what it should go wrong ?

 

Thank you to anyone will answer

Pat