OK, I have fixed the search problem (it was happening when you used the search directly from the menu) and the friend code form problem.
I'm not to sure what is going on the the suppressing of the profiles... it seems to work for me (FF3). I'll try it with other browsers...
About the missing friends... they are probably lost forever. The way vbulletin stores buddy information has changed allot, so I had to write a script that converted the information from the old friend system to the new friend system. Otherwise we all would have to start our lists over...
I tested it on mine and Robert's buddy list on our test server before I ran it this morning on the live server. Neither one of us lost any friends...
You should still at least have them listed as buddies, just not friends. You will probably have to just reissue the friend request.