Well, I found that my .datachannel properties were mismatched: So I set up the .datachannel on the server (ftp site) to "PORT" and explicitly set my vbscript .datachannel to "PORT". And it started to work! The connection always worked as did changing folders - it was just the .UPLOAD that didn't.
I plan on re-writing all my vbscript into VFP - hope that everything will still work out good....

Thanks