Trying to access package manager, getting an empty download...

[Randomskk]

Well, I just installed SMF 1.1 RC2, and I've gotta say it's lovely, and was working fine - up until I downloaded some avatar packs. Uploaded them with no erros, but when trying to apply them it asked for an FTP username/password, but it didn't take it (just kept asking again) so I went the the root dir and chmod -R 777 * to fix the permissions problems.
Having done this, I went back to the package manager, but when I click the "packages" link Firefox tells me it's trying to download the page, and if I download it it's an empty page.

I've tried deleting the newly uploaded avatar packs to no effect.

Any ideas?

edit:
Using Konqueror to browse the site gives me this on attempted access:

An error occurred while loading hxxp:randomskk.net/forum/index.php?action=packages: [nonactive]
Connection to host hxxp:randomskk.net [nonactive] is broken.

edit2:
Renaming the original files to orginal.old, then extracting a new file from the downloaded archive doesn't help - same problem, even with the fresh files.

edit3:
I'm using PHP 4.4.1, Apache 2.0.x, MySQL 5.0.17.
I tried copying the SQL and install.php file back into the directory and re-running the install - to no effect, the packages menu is still broken.
Everything else seems to work.

[Randomskk]

bump...
no ideas?
Would it be easier to just reinstall?