Error: Unable to create dir: /home/snowbrd/public_html/gallery/albums/.users

Hey all,
I do not have the gallery system information because the gallary I'm working on was inactive for about a year, and no one has any passwords, so I'm trying to upgrade but not get rid of any settings, hopefully this is possible.

phpinfo link - http://www.uofcsnowboardclub.ca/gallery/phpinfo.php

The errors are:

Warning: mkdir(/home/snowbrd/public_html/gallery/albums/.users) [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /home/snowbrd/public_html/gallery/classes/gallery/UserDB.php on line 43
Error: Unable to create dir: /home/snowbrd/public_html/gallery/albums/.users
Upgrading Users
The user database in your gallery was created with an older version of the software and is out of date. This is not a problem! We will upgrade it. This may take some time. Your data will not be harmed in any way by this process. Rest assured, that if this process takes a long time now, it's going to make your gallery run more efficiently in the future.

If you get an error, and only some users are upgraded, try refreshing the page to upgrade remaining users.

Please Wait...
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/snowbrd/public_html/gallery/classes/gallery/UserDB.php on line 341

In the subject line that is the error I'm getting. I know why it is, I just need to know how I can get around or do something to upgrade the gallary 1.4 to gallary 1.5 without the admin password and teh .users file.

There are many many settings in which I'd like to keep, if this is possible I'd love to know.

I followed the 1.5 installation, but I'm stuck because of this .users. I can not run the cofiguration wizard. I believe I'm on the right track, I followed everything properly, but this is in the way.

The uuniversity of Calgary Showboardclub did however have a backup of their ftp, thus I have the files.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Regards,

Gallery version (not just "2"):
PHP version (e.g. 4.3.11):
PHPInfo Link (see FAQ):
Webserver (e.g. Apache 1.3.33):
Database (e.g. MySql 4.0.11):
Activated toolkits (e.g. NetPbm, GD):
Operating system (e.g. Linux):
Browser (e.g. Firefox 1.0):

A. Bullock