Characters disfugured and news module doesn't appear

[unseal_tokyo]

Anyone help me?

After upgrading from 1.2.1 to 1.7.1, Japanese characters disfugured. Server admin told me that mySQL expressed correct Japanese characters. So I have no hit to solve this problem. Templete I use indiciate a language as "Ja".
Also News module doesn't appear on the home page at all  with only error message like, "string(67) "Smarty error: unable to read resource: "module_db_tpl:News;summary"" ". But I don't know how to mend the module with these message.

Any help would be greatly appariciated.

unseal

[calguy1000]

we have never tested direct upgrades from 1.2.1 to 1.7, 1.2 was VERY old.
so you should have read all of the changes that occurred between these releases, and done at least staged upgrades
i.e at least:  1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7.1
and verifying, and creating backups at each step.

[unseal_tokyo]

Thank you for your quick response, Calguy1000.

Your adive is quite reasonable. But the fact is that our server already upgraded MySQL to version5. As a result, no previous versions could not be excuted any more.
I think there should be some way to solve this problem. For example, all the installation proceses were successful
and no explicit failure. Also English text on every page is normal.
Only Japanese characters are disfugured and News module unexcutalble.
Any help possible?

we have never tested direct upgrades from 1.2.1 to 1.7, 1.2 was VERY old.
so you should have read all of the changes that occurred between these releases, and done at least staged upgrades
i.e at least:  1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7.1
and verifying, and creating backups at each step.

[unseal_tokyo]

As to charatcrer disfigured, I solved it by deleting and and rewriting the pages.  About news module, I installed old version and it worked.
Thank you for your help, Calguy!