I completly removed the tomcat folder and deployed the new one from the last release of alfresco. Previously i have tar extracted directly within the alfresco root folder and removed the war file but the problem was still there. So completly removing the tomcat folder and deplying again fixed the problem.
On the other hand the problem with users not having the possibility to create documents was simply a permission issue that has been recently implemented. I have given all the users the corresponding permissions and the problem was fixed as well.
Good work with alfresco, hopefully the upgrade process will be simplified in the future.
david