[support] Cryptic error messages?

[Roger]

I'm hoping someone can advise me on this problem.

I set the Drupal 7.12 file system to "Maintenance Mode"
Zipped the complete filesystem, copied it across to my machine, created 
a fresh database, Installed the unzipped filesystem.
Mysqldump the server database, copied it to my machine and restored it 
to the fresh install database. Unset Maintenance Mode. All worked smoothly.

The above results in error messages as below. Error is theme agnostic 
and too cryptic to be of help. Logs as below do not reveal  helpful 
info. The fault seems to be an inaccessible file or directory. But which?

Can someone please tell me what the destination directory is, where I 
can find it.
Where should I look for more info, Google has been uninformative.
I have set /tmp to 777 and created /sites/default/files/tmp and set that 
to 777.
I have <File system><Private file system path> set to 
sites/default/files/tmp
and <Temporary directory> set to sites/default/files/tmp
I have deleted both - no change - error remains.

Thank you in advance
Roger

Garland theme:
"The specified file /themes/garland/images/menu-collapsed.gif/ could not 
be copied, because the destination directory is not properly configured. 
This may be caused by a problem with file or directory permissions. More 
information is available in the system log."

  Mayo theme:
"The specified file /sites/all/themes/mayo/logo.png/ could not be 
copied, because the destination directory is not properly configured. 
This may be caused by a problem with file or directory permissions. More 
information is available in the system log."

Same again for the Bartik theme.

All themes are default with default logos.
A strange thing is that the Mayo theme if left on default seems to work 
sometimes and when reloaded reverts to black on white.

Location 
http://localhost/youth/admin/appearance/settings/mayo?render=overlay&render=overlay 
<http://localhost/local.youth/admin/appearance/settings/mayo?render=overlay&render=overlay> 

Referrer 
http://localhost/youth/admin/appearance/settings/mayo?render=overlay 
<http://localhost/local.youth/admin/appearance/settings/mayo?render=overlay> 

Message 	The file permissions could not be set on 
/public://color/mayo-c617f64e/colors.css/.


The error " Message: The file permissions could not be set on 
/public/...etc" changes each time the error is trapped.