Received message "it was not possible to add collection for the following paths" after HDD to SSD upgrade

[Howard]

I've run into a problem migrating from a 1TB hard disk drive to a 2TB SSD.
This is on a two-drive Windows 10 installation. The C drive is a Samsung 850
SSD and holds the digikam database files; the D drive holds all my
photographs, raw files, TIFF files, JPG files, etc.

I am running the digikam 7.0 beta 2 release, but have run into the same
issue running the 6.4 production release. After cloning the HDD and
rebooting Windows using the Samsung 860 SSD as my D drive, digikam was
unable to access my photos, issuing the "it was not possible to add
collection for the following paths: D:\Users\Howard\Pictures" message
shortly after startup. All of my other software packages (Lightroom 6.14,
DXO PhotoLab 3.1.1, ACDSee Photo Studio, etc.) can access (read & write) my
photos.

I tried uninstalling/reinstalling 7.0 beta 2 and had the same result. I then
uninstalled the 7.0 beta 2 release and installed digikam 6.4 and
received the same error message.

I've moved the SQLite databases to the D drive, restarted digikam, but
continue to receive the same error message when I manually try to add
D:\Users\Howard\Pictures to my Local Collections. Digikam is able to see the
database files on the D drive, but times out about one minute after trying
to add my pictures directory to its collection.

I tried to switch to MariaDB, but was unable to get the internal MariaDB
database to work, something about "Internal server not used and is not
active!".

Any idea what I should try next?

Thanks,Howard