xml import from wordpress keeps failing with various errors

I’m trying to move all my wordpress.com to self hosted wordpress on dreamhost.
I’ve done a one click install of latest wordpress, which is successful. I then go into the dashboard to tools, import, and install the importer for wordpress. I go to Import and install WordPress Importer by wordpressdotorg.

I go to my wordpress.com and export the xml file (All content) and download the file

I return to my new site and upload the file (395kb xml text)

I import the author and I inlcude “download and import file attachments” and hit submit

The first error I got was as follows:

Import WordPress
Sorry, there has been an error.
File is empty. Please upload something more substantial. This error could also be caused by uploads being disabled in your php.ini or by post_max_size being defined as smaller than upload_max_filesize in php.ini.

I then deleted the install of wordpress and the db and did a fresh install.

Now the error I get is:

Oops! That page can’t be found.
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?

Very weird.

Help please!