What is the correct way to import an .XML demo?

[SouthernSky]

I have two hairs left.

Every time I import an .xml demo file into a theme on a new domain, the home page never correctly displays the pictures and content. In Dashboard, all the posts and comments and graphics are listed and indeed have been imported, but the hpbottom and other section never appear on the home page.

Brian fixed one for me once but I never found out what he did to correct it. Someone suggested I needed to modify all the category numbers in the homepage.php but that seems like that would defeat the purpose of having an intact demo.

Generally, I upload a theme to my user directory on my server, set the rights to 777 (I know) and then cp -r -p over to the themes directory. Then I go to Dashboard and choose to Import, Import Wordpress, and it pulls the upload from my C: drive instead of what I already uploaded (rights issue with this?).

But when I activate the theme, it looks like this instead of the demo:

http://www.louisianacatalog.com