Ok so I've scoured the forum but nothing seems to point to exactly the same problem, tried some suggested fixes but to no avail. Also, although I'm a newbie to the forum I've installed zen many times before without major issue but this is a new hosting company!

Here's the scenario.

New install of V1.38 here www. thejungledrummer .com/store

During install I received a message that the server is running php as cgi/fcgi but from what I can gather this is not too much of an issue - right?

Once installed I switched to the store/index page to check out everything was OK. - Page appeared OK but with no styling. (in FF with developer plugin the CSS files show as "500 internal server error")

So I emailed the hosting company as I found a post about this which said:
"Ask your hosting company to all the "Limit" keyword to the
AllowOverrides parameter of your domain's vhost configuration in their
server's httpd.conf settings file.
This is your most secure option for Apache-based Webservers"

They replied
"Unfortunately I cannot make the requested changes to the system. Our shared hosting system is pre set to pre-arranged security configurations and cannot be changed."

So from the same zen post I tried renaming the .htaccess (includes & admin/includes) temporarily, this fixed the front end of the store but the admin still has no styling.

In addition I received the usual warning about configure.php files being writeable, I am unable to change the CHMOD settings so the Hosting company said add this to the end of configure.php code:

define('WARN_CONFIG_WRITEABLE','false');

Is this correct (and secure) or just hiding the warning? and how do I fix the .htaccess/styling issues?

Sorry for the long post guys just trying to save time by giving complete information.