Need help in moving large database to new server

A little background:
I run a forum for automobile enthusistast in Maryland.
www.mdstreetscene.com
www.mdstreetscene.com/forum
~2,000 users. 400 active. Maximum of 25 users online at any given time.
Shared Premium Hosting account w/ PHP/Perl w/ GoDaddy (yea yea, there's your problem, blah blah, I know)

Starting December 27, 2007, the forums, at various times, have been extremely slow. On that day the server load average hit 34.79 24.60 20.74 with 8 Users Online. I realize that those averages show the entire server, not just my site. Since that day, the load averages have hit 12.xx at various times. It will take 10-12 seconds (or sometimes longer) for the AdminCP to load or to do a "New Posts" search. About the same time to read a thread. Then again, sometimes the forum will be perfectly fine. However, even when the forums slow to a crawl, the averages may only be 2.x I have contacted GoDaddy and they say "everything" is as normal. I contacted them the other night, and they asked me to do a Trace Route to my site and send the results to them. I did it just to appease them. Well, the traceroute is going to mdstreetscene.com (the html site). The database is on http://mysql47.secureserver.net/ So I don't quite know how that is going to help them diagnose the problem. They probably just want to say that it's on my end with too many hops or something.

Anyway, I want to stop using GoDaddy for the database/forum part. They are alright for file hosting (I have 200GB of storage w/ 2TB of bandwidth. And my download speeds are ~750kb/s)

I have acquired a Virtual Server with Windows Administrator access. (I can install whatever program I want/need) I am running Apache w/ MySQL, PHP, etc. I want to upload/put my 400mb database on this server. I don't quite know how to do it. What file type should I be uploading and where? Using what program? I assume I would have to copy the actual vBulletin forum files to the new server too? That's fine, it'll take awhile, but it's doable.

Is there a way I can use a brand new vBulletin forum installation (which I currently have on this virtual server), and just add my database info such as users, posts, threads, and PM's? This way I kind of have a fresh start and I can build it up.

I know this may be a lot to ask, but thanks for any help you can give.

[snakes1100]

mysql -uroot -p mdssvbulletin1 < C:/web/htdocs/mdssvbulletin.sql

[jayunsplanet]

I got this error @ the 89.8mb mark
ERROR 2006 (HY000) at line 1350359: MySQL server has gone away

[snakes1100]

You need to check the mysql log file for what caused it, if nothing is there, you may need to tweak my.cnf and restart mysql, its most likely a default my.cnf from the install with nothing in it.

[Xorlev]

Originally Posted by FRDS

Windows hosting is just as reliable and secure as *nix hosting. Its the admins that run the servers that are the issue most the time.

Oh man, I haven't heard that good of a joke in ages. You should really be a stand-up comedian.