As per http://opensourcecms.pro/drupal/howto-drupal-7-sub-theme-creation-step-by-st...
I copied both Bartik and Garland default themes over to /sites/all/themes renamed them and made the alterations to .info file and the template.php file as per the tut and the themes worked out of the box.
I unthinkingly went to settings in the /sites/all/theme/bartik2 and garland2 to alter the footer color in Bartik2 and the blue header in Garland2 and the themes are now dead, they will not load. WSOD.
If I ?q=admin and change the theme back to default Bartik , Garland or other themes these work as expected.
I did note with the Bartik theme that I added engine=phptemplate and that seemed to kill it so I deleted the line but it does not reinstate. I have flushed caches in <Performance> and with drush flushed all caches, deleted browser history and have run out of ideas. Is there a trick or some thing I'm missing.
I need a clean 3 column fluid width theme with no borders or edges and simple template and css files, I find the garland theme easy enough but the Bartik theme is very complicated, more than I need.
I would greatly appreciate help on understanding the issues and how to fix for the future. Cheers Roger