How I did it.
download copy of config.php from live site
login to cpanel and create a new database IPSV4b5 for example
Assign existing user to the database
create directory / subdomain for the test install (remember that this is the URL that will be used for all test installs
Upload the files for IPB v4
copy public and upload folders for live site (don't move, download locally - you could also compress these two folders and move the compressed file and then extract that by using cpanel file manager) then upload them to the directory for the test install (I personally took it offline for maintenance for 5 minutes).
You can do this part in one of 2 ways, take live forum offline or leave live (crude but effective) change the upload paths to the uploads paths for the test database you can also do this via phpmyadmin but I'm not 100 certain on what needs changed in the database but only do it once you have copied the database (see below)
login to phpmyadmin, go to existing database, and then select operations,
Untick create database before copying and in the field above, enter the database information and then click go to copy the database to the test install database
once it has copied, go to the config.php in the test install directory edit and enter the test database information (replacing the live database information).
then go to www.domain.com/admin/upgrade and run the upgrader, it will ask you to convert to UTF8 if you haven't already done so.
Follow the upgrade steps