In case anyone is having the same problem i found the problem. for some reason the image paths it was looking for were wrong.
this section in dtree.php
this.icon = {
root : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/base.gif',
folder : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/folder.gif',
folderOpen : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/folderopen.gif',
node : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/page.gif',
empty : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/empty.gif',
line : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/line.gif',
join : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/join.gif',
joinBottom : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/joinbottom.gif',
plus : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/plus.gif',
plusBottom : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/plusbottom.gif',
minus : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/minus.gif',
minusBottom : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/minusbottom.gif',
nlPlus : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/nolines_plus.gif',
nlMinus : '<?php echo $curdir; ?>/dtree-img/nolines_minus.gif'
};
sent it to just /dtree-img/nolines_minus.gif etc. so i manually added the full paths and it works :)