import from 1.4-->2.3 problem with album.dat location

Having trouble importing from G1.4.4 to G2.3. gallery1.4 is running fine and gallery2.3 is running fine on my server. i completed ALL the premigration steps in the guide with no errors. GD is deactivated, URL rewrite module is configured and activated. comment module and hidden items modules are activated. Square thumbs module is turned off. The plug-in migration module is installed and activated. I even created test albums in BOTH gallery1 and gallery2 after completing these steps and got no errors. Everything goes smooth until I get to step 2 of import. I enter the path of my g1 albums directory, taken straight from my config.php file, which is "/home/tonysta/public_html/pictures/albums". I then get the following error:

Error (ERROR_BAD_PARAMETER) : Missing or not readable file: /home/tonysta/public_html/pictures/albums/cache/album.dat

* in modules/migrate/classes/Gallery1DataParser.class at line 66 (gallerycoreapi::error)
* in modules/migrate/classes/Gallery1DataParser.class at line 225 (gallery1dataparser::loadfile)
* in modules/migrate/classes/Gallery1DataParser.class at line 109 (gallery1dataparser::loadalbumfields)
* in modules/migrate/ChooseObjects.inc at line 260 (gallery1dataparser::getalbumlist)
* in modules/migrate/ChooseObjects.inc at line 213 (chooseobjectsview::_createg1albumtree)
* in modules/core/SiteAdmin.inc at line 201 (chooseobjectsview::loadtemplate)
* in modules/core/classes/GalleryView.class at line 300 (siteadminview::loadtemplate)
* in main.php at line 441 (siteadminview::doloadtemplate)
* in main.php at line 94
* in main.php at line 83

It looks like it's looking for an album.dat file inside a folder called "cache" that's inside my album directory. I look for this file and it's not there. However, there IS a file called albumdb.dat that is in the root of the album directory path (not in the cache folder). I look at this file and it contains all the info the migration module needs...but it's looking for the the wrong file name (album.dat instead of almubdb.dat) and it's looking in the wrong location. The server will not let me create a file inside the "cache" folder. I even tried to copy the text from my albumdb.dat file and create a new file with the name "album.dat" inside the cache folder. Even if I change the folder permissions I get denied. Seems like my gallery1 is putting that album info in the wrong file or the wrong path, BUT gallery1 still works fine. Is this because of the version. Do I need to upgrade to gallery 1.5 Before importing to 2.3??? Please help. Seems like nobody else has had this problem with the album.dat file when importing.

System info:

System Information
Gallery version 2.2.3
PHP version 4.4.7 apache
Webserver WebServerX
Database mysqlt 4.1.22-standard
Toolkits Thumbnail, NetPBM
Operating system Linux jet20.hasweb.com 2.4.21-51.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Aug 16 16:55:29 EDT 2007 i686
Browser Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11