permalinks/chmod

I have been through codex, the wiki and this forum. Nothing I’m seeing is helping me change file permissions. My host has Apache, if that matters. I have tried to chmod with no luck. I have tried to edit vars.php both through my host file manager and the wordpress editor. I have tried to change files to 666 through my host’s file manager, but the changes won’t stick.

My htaccess is empty. I have no idea what to do. Please help!

Cheers!