Hi Pavel
So, Ive tried all the above and it definitely has got something to do with caches and themes. I activated theme developer mode and this is what i got. There are no pictures but the general layout has, for the first time, appeared and looks the way it should be (ie the layout structure etc). Even if I cahnge theme, the basic layout to any theme seems to be working under developer mode but the minute i disengage developer mode it reverts back to having no layout and that broken picture icon showing everywhere. But then what would i need to change (or the ISP change) for it to work with themes.
I can smell a solution here.
Heres what it looks like now (this is the essential theme, my moodledata folder is 0777, that works) But this theme thing , and this cache thing. Hmmm. You can see that chrome picks up 2 problems. Do you know what this might be. Again, thanks for the help