A Developers Worst Nightmare

Good Afternoon fellow php peeps, I'll try to make this as informative and brief as possible, and hopefully somebody can shed some light on the matter. I am having problems moving a web site from a development environment to a production environment.. My problems lie in sessions and objects in the sessions. My development machine is running php4rc1 w/ apache 1.3.12 and postgresql 7.0.. This code works fine and great.. I have also had great success on a development environment on php4beta3 & php4beta4.. however yesterday i installed a machine (* unfortunately i don't have any hdwre specs on, somebody else built *) w/ 4.0.1pl2 w/ postgres 7.02 and apache 1.3.12. I did have problems w/ this build.. I actually got involved half way through the process when the people that built the machine were having problems... Eventually I got all the problems out (* as though i thought *).. I am about 90% sure I used the exact same build parameters I used to build my previous 2 development boxes.. that I did a couple months ago. (* I can't check my development box cause I packed it up and is in storage while I move *).. The main thought I have is I screwed up the build yesterday.. but????? don't know.. anyways.. When I run some(*most*) of the pages they completely blow up, things don't get stored in the session correctly and various other issues. nothing seems to work smoothly.. I will list the "majors" problem below.. So I am wondering if there has been some changes in sessions and classes/objects.. how things are handled.. from php4.0rc1 to 4.0.1pl2. I have been on the mailing lists since feb. or march of this year.. and do not recall reading any other user w/ this problem.. I have also scanned the mailing lists, or forumns, archives... everything.. and I haven't found anything like this.. maybe i'm not looking deep enough.. but haven't found anything.. My other question is.. Perhaps Maybe I compiled the rc1, phpb4, phpb3 incorrectly ? and was able to "hack" a workable version.. and now w/ the 4.0.1pl2 i compiled it correctly and am now longer to "use" the way I was handling sessions and objects before? My main thought is that I compiled 4.0.1pl2 incorrectly.. here's a typical type of error message: 1) Fatal error: The script tried to execute a method or access a property of an incomplete object. Please ensure that the class definition clsxyzsession of the object you are trying to operate on was loaded _before_ the session was started in search_form_options_body.php on line 18 ... I can include the class definition before the session start, and that works, somewhat.. but I HAVE Never had to do that before.. and Remind you same code works on rc1... no errors.. 2) another type of problem is on "my login page" the sessions don't store the userid unless i use an echo""; if i remove the echo"" the session variable defaults to "1"... strangest thing i have ever seen in my entire life. sorry to write a book, but I am totally frustrated, cause I had a 100% working model prototype here... and now it's look'n like a potential rewrite of the entire site to use the most recent php builds.. I shot the people the rc1 tarball to install and see if that works.. so that way it's hopefully the exact php code that I developed on.. any comments are welcomed... Thanks for Listening and Helping, Chris ps.. side note.. I forgot I also have the Zend Optimizer Installed on Both Development and Production Machines..