HI there,
sounds to me that you have missed a couple simple but necessary steps:
1) You need to ensure that the sitewide forums have been installed as well as the buddypress group forum. Both are installed from the “forums” tab of the buddypress setup menu;
2) You need to be sure to delete AND empty the trash, of any page slug that was created which has “forums” as its name. This is necessary to allow the sitewide forums to use that slug.
3) Be sure that you create a new page for buddypress group forums that is anything other than “forums” (call it “group-forums” for example)
4) Be sure to go to Settings/Permalinks and hit “save” one time after all of this is setup.
We’ve done a little tutorial video to show how you can setup either a BuddyPress Group Forum, a SiteWide bbPress 2.0 Forum, or a custom hybrid forum page using shortcodes. You can have all three at one time. Hope this helps 
http://labsecrets.com/2012/01/23/buddypress-and-bbpress-forums-made-easy/
Cheers!
Spence
http://labsecrets.com
Yeah.. he’s done a video on the subject that stops half way through and requires you to pay to join labsecrets to see the rest.. Tell the whole story dude. Half of an answer is not an answer it is part of the problem.
Hi fritz, et al…
Fritz… I have no idea what you are talking about.
None of our videos stop halfway and you never have to pay to watch any of them?
I suggest you try again and also checkout archives, google, or even our YouTube or Vimeo libraries (“labsecrets” is the name), and you will find hundreds of full length, all free videos.
Cheers!
Spence
http://labsecrets.com/tutorials
Thank you Spence! This link saved me. I have been trying to get my forums working again after installing BuddyPress and was about to give up. This pointed me in the right direction and taught me a little extra about the layout of pages and shortlinks for wordpress. Perfect! Thanks.
Hello, that works pretty good. Thanks a lot.
Hey guys,
we’ve updated the video guide for bbPress 2.2.2 and BuddyPress 1.6.1 as there have been some significant and valuable additions. Have a peek if you need it: http://labzip.com/the-definitive-guide-to-buddypress-bbpress-configuration/
Cheers!
spence