I replaced all files of 1.7.1 with those of 1.8.2. then upon ruining the new script for first time it displayed a button to upgrade the db on which I clicked and this error was thrown:
Running query: LOCK TABLES qa_users WRITE, qa_userlogins WRITE, qa_userlevels WRITE, qa_userprofile WRITE, qa_userfields WRITE, qa_messages WRITE, qa_userfavorites WRITE, qa_usernotices WRITE, qa_userevents WRITE, qa_sharedevents WRITE, qa_cookies WRITE, qa_categories WRITE, qa_pages WRITE, qa_widgets WRITE, qa_posts WRITE, qa_blobs WRITE, qa_words WRITE, qa_titlewords WRITE, qa_contentwords WRITE, qa_tagwords WRITE, qa_posttags WRITE, qa_uservotes WRITE, qa_userpoints WRITE, qa_userlimits WRITE, qa_iplimits WRITE, qa_options WRITE, qa_cache WRITE, qa_usermetas WRITE, qa_postmetas WRITE, qa_categorymetas WRITE, qa_tagmetas WRITE ...
8 upgrade step/s remaining...