by Willem Verster.
Hi Howard,
Thanks for the support. Hopefully this specific mystery has been resolved. I have opened a free hosting site which gives you access to 1 mysql databasis for the purposes of evaluating Moodle.
Eventually the web host replied with this mystery solver: Access to INFORMATION_SCHEMA database is disabled on free account, while it is required for moodle to work properly.
I have moved Moodle to the my "paid" account and it is running happily.
Regards and thanks
Willem