There are a number of ways to assign specific versions of PHP to a given website, so updating your server may not provide that latest to WP. Look in .htaccess. Because you’re using Windows, I can’t offer much more than that, as I’m only really familiar with Linux stacks.
Steve, thanks for the response. Quick update before I dig thru what you sent. In IIS and PHP manager for the site in question, it still showed the old PHP. I registered the new PHP, and that now shows 7.4.1. It won’t load if I click check phpinfo()
Also browsing to the site or admin page I get
There has been a critical error on your website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.
But do not get an email
Errors like this are logged. Check the error log on your server. If you can’t find the log, please contact your host.
Meantime, enable wp_debug and wp_debug_log and after an error, look at wp-content/debug.log to see if anything gets logged there. https://wordpress.org/support/article/debugging-in-wordpress/
You may have a theme or plugin that doesn’t like PHP 7
Ok, that helped. It choked on 1 plugin so I just renamed the plugin folder and reload. It then choked on a 2nd plugin, did the same and got the DB needs updated message, now I’m in the dashboard
Do you now see updates available for those plugins? If not, which plugins?
Haven’t looked yet. A few active ones have updates too, but having issues updating. Getting the dreaded unable to locate content directory. Trying to figure out the Windows rights issue now. The updates I had issues with are
advance-wp-filemanager
phpgrid