Help on Upgrade

[Haro-san]

Hi it all hits the fan at once... I'm a newbie... wife just had ER surgery, but out of danger... forum banning users... need to upgrade... ad nauseum... I'm hoping for an assist here since there's no time to research.
1. User's are getting "banned...forever", especially when executing link from vB initiated email. Going to forum homepage worksaround the problem, but users aren't happy campers. I assume the best way to fix is to upgrade to latest version (now @ 3.6.5). Anything else I can try.
2. Since 1st upgrade wanted to move vB to local machine, and do the upgrade there first. So downloaded forum folder. But have different name for database. Created db to match server but obviously empty. I have current backup done w/ vb. How do I restore that database to my local machine. I found the following, and agreed I'm a bit frazzled but I can't see anything that will let me do this.

From the main vBulletin Options section, there is the ability to backup the options of each product including vBulletin itself.

This is useful when backing up a board or moving an install from one site to another, or for replicating a board from a test environment to a live site, or visa versa for testing purposes.

To download and back the settings, choose the product you wish to download from the select list and click backup.

To restore either upload the XML file from your computer or restore the XML file from your server, do that by either locating the file to upload then clicking restore or giving the path to the XML settings file on your local server, then clicking restore.

I would buy someone who helps lunch for life but I also "be" broke.