Thanks for the ideas RvR.  I checked the DB and the names, passwords, users etc were exactly the same.  I am guessing that is not the difficulty but I could easily be wrong. If the path in the DB was wrong wouldn't that also impact whether it would be able to grab data and put it on the page?  It's able to do that just not format. Given the clean new install doing the same left justification thing I think i will wait to hear from the web host first before I put too much more effort into things. This may very well not be a problem with my installation. They should not take too long.....gulp.

Any wrong entries in settings.php, .htaccess or the database (database entries as mentioned in the site duplication instructions)? Any differences in using http OR https in different entries? Access/read/write permissions (and owner and group) of data directory sufficient and correct? To be 100% sure that no wrong references remain in the cached files you could rename the "cache" folder in your data directory (renaming is the fasted way here to backup it). The cache folder will get re-created automatically, and then it would be only with newly cached files (if recreation works not much point in keeping the cache folder backup as all cached files will be added as soon as being nececessary).

Any feedback from the hoster yet?

@trgolden - my team had the same problem with CSS not loading when installing Elgg3.3.x. The issue we had was web server configuration (apache) - not Elgg. If your web host uses apache, you can ask them to add 'AllowOverride All' in the apache config file.

Easy way no coding:

Use invitation codes.

@rjcalifornia   

Thanks very much rjcalifornia.  Are you referring to this one:

Registration by Invitation