[xwiki-users] upgrade question

I am trying to upgrade from 3.0 rc1 to something more current. I have tried to go from 3.0 -> 3.5 and from 3.0 -> 4.1.3 both times I lost the ability to see my user rights and my document index. I was just trying to upgrade the core components so I was not importing the default xar, although I did try that too following the precautions not to import Preferences and Rights pages. Do I need to go sequentially through all versions or is there a suggestion on how I may accomplish this? My wiki currently is not that big but we are getting prepared to rollout to larger audience and I would like to upgrade before. Thanks for any advice, Bob