My b2evolution Version: 2.x

I think that, after all is said and done, I'll end up using 3.3.0 instead of 2.4.7 because it works splendidly, but I'd like to know what the issue was, even if just for curiosity's sake.

I've searched around a bit and not been able to find a related thread, so please forgive any redundancy.

I set up a WAMP server today for development purposes and installed b2evolution 2.4.7 as part of the site I'll be developing. Some server details:
- Windows XP Pro SP3
- Apache 2.2.11
- PHP 5.3.0 (VC6 Apache module, thread safe)
- MySQL 5.1.36

I created a dedicated MySQL user for b2 and granted it full access to its own, brand new database. The blog files are stored under /news, and the installation went smashingly, with no database or permissions problems. After completing the installation with the demo blogs and such, I logged into the backoffice as the admin, changed the password to something memorable, and viewed the blogs (specifically, Blog A then B ) after making no other changes.

Well, tried to view the blogs, anyway. Everything seemed to display normally, except no post text was shown. This turned out to be true even when viewing an individual post via permalink and regardless of the skin which was used. In fact, the only places I could view a post's text were the Dashboard's preview area and when editing a post.

No text:
http://users.eastlink.ca/~joshfraser/public/no_posts.png

No text at all is generated between <div class="bText"> and </div>. The only way I've been able to display "post text" is to echo some text in div.bText in _item_content_inc.php:

http://users.eastlink.ca/~joshfraser/public/echo_posts.png

For obvious reasons, this solution is far from satisfactory. :p

I tried dropping the database, deleting all blog files, and starting from scratch, this time not installing the demo blogs, but even with a newly created blog, not a single post would display. The exact same symptoms occurred and continued to occur even after starting a virgin WAMP server on another machine (same product versions as above).

As near as I can tell, every other part of b2evolution displays exactly the way it is intended, and, as I implied earlier, the 3.3.0 RC works wonderfully. I've been at this for a few hours now and feel quite lost, adrift in a sea of PHP soup and server configuration files. If anyone can help shed some light on the situation, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers!