Lost posts and categories

Hi,

I have been using WordPress for just over a year. For quite some time, I was using an early version (a 1.5.x version) but I had recently (October 15th) switched to version 2.0.4. There were understandably some issues with some old themes and plugins. I continued to use one plugin Sticky Image (Glue an Image to your post By Markus Buschhoff.) and it mostly works with the current WordPress. Otherwise I am using supported plugins.

I logged in recently (about five days ago) and noticed that some posts and categories are missing. I thought that maybe they were hidden or otherwise not immediately viewable but while looking around in the admin area I could not locate the posts. I found this strange as I had not made any recent changes (within the past days) so I am not sure what caused the sudden loss of posts. Furthermore, the posts had not been placed in “uncategorized” and were lost altogether.

I recognize that there are a number of possible sources to the problem (My host, My plugins, something wrong with my database, etc.) and I am not presently trying to troubleshoot that. I am just looking for the easiest way to restore my posts. I had not activated the new plugin that came with 2.0.4 (WordPress Database Backup [On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Scott Merrill.]) but I will after this is restored. I did, however, back-up everything when I had done the October 15th upgrade from 1.5.x to 2.0.4 (content folder, database via MySQL) so I am just trying to see what the fastest and/or easiest way to restore my old posts and categories is. I appreciate your help.

Thanks