am i missing something

have you done any basic troubleshooting?

1st to try for all problems: deactivate all your plugins and test
2nd to try for all problems: switch to twentyten theme to see if its theme specific

yep deactivated all plugins (only had 3.. sitemaps.. contact and WP2G) also switching the twentyten made no difference.

I would recommend next to reinstall WP core files. Usually using the auto-upgrade in the dashboard works fine for me. But if not use ftp/file manager to upload the core files. (do NOT overwrite wp-content folder, or wp-config.php file if you do it manually)

Tried the reinstall from the admin and no joy ??

Well did a full upload via FTP and overwriten all the files as instructed and still no difference! still no publist/post/save button or anything! same as the screen shot above!

Solved!

after many hours trying to figger out what had happened i found that if i clicked the screen option button on the post page and change to 2 coloum the left colum was there with the publish buttons and options.

Unsure why this changed since/during the upgrade or why these buttons are not available in a single coloum when the option is there.

I am so sorry I forgot to ask that! It happened to several people on the upgrade to 3.0. Glad you found it

yeah found it just by pressing everything lol…. normal way of learning. why is there the option for single colum if it stops the page from working?

I think you can drag and drop stuff….. So on a narrow monitor or something, move everything into the main column, then set it to single column

oh right