[zebu]

Great advice - problem solved. It seems host has ioncube loaded. However many moons ago they must not have and we put an entry in the php.ini file to put to a local copy of ioncube in our home directory.

When we were advised that php.ini files were to be removed, I simply deleted the contents and left it blank. This caused the site to fall over.

However once the file was deleted , problem resolved and server level ion cube is being used. It seems that having an empty php.ini file was the issue. (Plus the fact the host couldnt advise that ion cube was loaded at a higher level - which then created panic stations!!)