If making a duplicate of a site I'd always use akeeba backup

Have you had sef urls enabled together with the .htaccess as some point?

Yes to both.

If you re-enable them does that work?

I first noticed the behavior with SEF turned on. One of the first things I did was disable it, though the .htaccess files is in place.

I have turned off URL rewriting though in config.

Have you tried renaming it back to htaccess.txt?

still a blank page....

and you've tried switching to a default Joomla template with the non working version?

You've checked the search results page is accessible via a menu link? and the id in the search module is correct?

Cheers
Paul

yes, ran through all of those options sadly.

I created a fresh copy of the template in another URL, and migrated some pieces of my site to it, and search works. Therefore I'm thinking I have a deeper issue with this Joomla install or the database itself.

I'm going to stop with this thread, and migrate to a new version, re-linking things if needed, and see if that solves many issues I'm having.

Thanks

Good luck with it

Cheers
Paul