Move between servers deleted text widgets

Hi,
I recently moved my WP from one server to another. To do this i copied all the files from the server FTP and exported a clone of the phpMyAdmin DB. I then searched through the files and changed http://oldurl…. to http://newurl….
Once done I imported the DB file and uploaded the server files on the new FTP.

BUT, for some reason all of my text widgets got deleted and when I look in the DB (widget_text in wp_options), instead of having a super long line of different text widget codes, all that’s left is “a:2:{i:2;a:0:{}s:12:”_multiwidget”;i:1;}”.
For some reason, even though I change it back to the super long code, when ever I go to Widgets in the admin panel it changes it back to the short code and the text widgets are gone, again….

Everything else works perfectly fine, it’s just the text widgets that seem stuck.
Is there some kind of temp setting that might be blocking me from changing it over? Because even when I change the code the text widgets doesn’t show up, and minutes later they change back again!