Upgrading from a super-old version

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I'm a very casual concrete5 user with a 5.2 version installation that went fubar when our hosting company upgraded servers to PHP 5.3 & no longer support what c5.2 was written for. The site still shows up, sort of, but throws a lot of errors complaining about split().

I found the wonderfully handy guide on upgrading an old installation (http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/how-tos/developers/update-very-old-sites/) but have hit a few snags & I'm hoping someone is willing & able to give me a clue.

Following the instructions, I got the past versions, copied over the first upgrade, 5.3.2, looked athttp://<site>/index.php/tools/required/upgrade/... and the page stated "Upgrading from 5.2.0 / Upgrading to 5.3.2", with a button to update to 5.3.2, which I clicked & got:
Error occurred while upgrading:
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in /home/pamelas/pamelasackett.com/concrete/libraries/3rdparty/adodb/adodb-xmlschema03.inc.php on line 1411

The upgrade's incomplete. Although the site's front page appears mostly normal: text & styling are OK but the banner's broken & clicking navigation returns a blank screen with 'No input file specified.' I can log in as admin, which shows version 5.3.2, and in the 'Help' column with messages, it shows a bunch of errors like 'Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home/pamelas/pamelasackett.com/concrete/libraries/3rdparty/simplepie.php on line 716'

No files show up in the file manager, hence no banner images. Pages can only be visited from the admin dashboard sitemap. The audio clip player & youtube windows work.

On the dashboard under 'Add functionality' most add-ons are non-functional, including Auto-Nav, Images & Library File. Opening any & hitting the refresh button throws:
The following errors occurred when attempting to process your request:
Deprecated: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated in /home/pamelas/pamelasackett.com/concrete/libraries/3rdparty/adodb/adodb-xmlschema03.inc.php on line 1411

I tried the upgrade steps for concrete5.3.3, but nothing really improved. On checking index.php/tools/required/upgrade.php and I got the following error:

An Unexpected Error occurred while upgrading: mysql error: [1054: Unknown column 'bID' in 'where clause'] in EXECUTE("UPDATE btFormQuestions SET bID=579 WHERE questionSetId=1 AND bID=0")

I since refreshed to 5.2 from backups, tried the 5.3.2 upgrade again, but got no further than before.

Have you been down this path before? Any pointers?

daniela