For whatever reason with any web host I have I always just bit the bullet and ftp them up one by one, I know it sucks, but it still makes me feel like im doing something when I go on the 360. 20 minutes of guilt free fun :)

Sometimes the ftp borks something and it is just easier to sync again, wouldn't do that if i hosted a bunch of sites, base.php has some bits in there that look promising.

Well I tried. I deleted everything from the server. Next I unzipped my file locally on my PC. Then I ftp'd everything back to the host and tried again. Same message!!! Yep I refreshed etc but no go. Could it be a PHP server issue or directory permissions problem?

I have limited experience with installing C5, but I know that it works fine (the RC1 5.x.x) on wamp server 2.0. I know that the original release doesn't work out of the box on Mosso without getting to the ITK cluster through support and still the upload didn't work, so I gave up there.

The C5 hosting seems like a sweet deal for the price (upgrade path alone is amazing) but if you need to be independent then I can personally recommend mediatemple, everything just works over there as of the 5.0.x release, havent tried RC1 over there but I don't expect many issues.

Hey, maybe a very late reply, today I had the same problem, but found a solution. I couldn't believe it. I checked the settings in the administration panel and some shady subcategory default settings were '.php off'. Ticked the box and next thing I know everythings runs smoothly.
Next time you might wanna check how your provider's settings are. Pretty straightforward, but it might give a solution.