importbuddy.php almost worked… no wp-admin access

i received a backup bundled with importbuddy.php from iThemes. it worked *almost* perfectly, transferring the site and images nicely. unfortunately i can’t access the admin. /wp-login.php and /wp-admin/ both return a 404.

i got a message on install that said:

A php.ini file was restored in the import process in the site root.
This may cause problems with site functionality if imported to a
different server as configuration options often differ between
servers, possibly resulting in degraded performance or unexpected
behavior.

on a whim, i removed that file, but that didn’t change what was happening, so i put it back. there is also one called php5.ini in there.

i noticed that better-wp-security was installed on the original site (i didn’t create it) so i removed that from the plugins folder to see if that was creating a conflict, but that didn’t help either.

i noticed my .htaccess file contains:

# BEGIN iThemes Security
	# BEGIN Hide Backend
			# Rules to hide the dashboard
			RewriteRule ^/adminarea/?$ /wp-login.php [QSA,L]

so i tried to add /adminarea/ to my url, but am still getting that 404.

i have also replaced my .htaccess with the standard one from the codex with no luck

can someone help me get access to the admin?

https://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/better-wp-security/