I decided to have a look at the logs in notepad ... wasn't sure what I was looking at, but noticed that schedulesdirect couldn't find tvdb (something or other). so I compared the new MP install with an older one (Old Programs) and found a few inconsistencies in the folder items... so I copied over a few items over to the new install, reset the forced EPG download and, HOORAH! ... EPG.
Don't know why the new install on the win7 64bit upgrade was missing the items.