Okay, after the glitch that 781 gave me I reverted back to 777 which screwed batch uploads. Just uploaded SVN 788 and batch upload is now restored. Backend single upload is okay too. However, front end image upload worked once but now comes up with the same error noted in previous post. Also description box won't allow comments.
FYI
Just upgraded to J1.5.3 from J1.5.2
Joomla is on PHP4

Editor of choice is JCE (could there be an issue here?)
Hope this helps.
Andy