I have concluded the php.ini and/or the .htaccess enteries are the problem.

The issue is that it seems, from reviewing other peoples problems and solutions hosting may bring its own demands and there is no universal fix for this or similar issues.

My hoster has given some useful tips but not any workable solution so the issue now waits on BuyScripts to solve the issue.

One query - where you add BOTH .htaccess and php.ini I assume they should be in the main folder for Vshare and nowhere else?

Also does .htaccess need to call the php.ini file. my hoster (in one try told me to create a .htaccess file with JUST this one line entry

suPHP_ConfigPath /home/churc40/httpdocs/ ( churc40 being my host ID and httpdocs for me but often htdocs or public_html in other hosts )

Is this necessary?