Image Field upload path different in local machine vs live server, how fix?

So I'm running a local test website in my windows xp machine using xampp. I have a content type that uses an image field and I uploaded my image. I see the image appear in my local sites/mywebsite/files directory when I upload it. So far so good.

In my live server, my website is installed in the default directory. When I export the database from my local machine and import into my live server, my content types show an "image not found" on the image. I looked at where it is looking for the image and it turns out that it is looking for it in the default/files/sites/mywebsite/files directory.

Should't it be looking in the default/files directory? Obviously, it somehow now thinks that default/files is some sort of directory root, but how do I configure/fix things in my local machine so that when I upload to live it doesn't try to look for things in a directory that doesn't exist?

To clarify, on the live site, the drupal is installed in public_html, my modules are in sites/all, and I installed drupal in the default directory (so it is in default where I have my settings.php file that points to my database). In this default directory I also have a files directory and here is where I think the image files should go (and that's where I copied them to), but it is looking for them in default/files/sites/mywebsite/files, which doesn't exist, because I only have a default/files directory with nothing in it other than my images (I put them there via ftp).

Any ideas?