Right, cheers for that, but no longer needed. couldn't find leafpad on the app mgr.

Problem is solved. I used emails with attachments to send the files to the n900, and the combination of gmail and nokia messaging gave me corrupted attachments, which i found out after editing the config file with leafpad.

thanks so much for your help guys ended up opening gmail in the webbrowser and downloading the attachments from it. the applet isn't clever enough to delete/overwrite all of the old files tho, so had to do that manually. I'm a happy camper now

EDIT: Made the post a little clearer