Dashboard not rendering properly (and errors on every admin screen)

UPDATE: This was not a problem with WordPress at all. The problem is resolved. I was stripping white space out of the final file dynamically with php in autoprepend/append files (left over from a previous project I had worked on where the blankspace was actually adding a lot of page weight and needed removed before delivering the file). At any rate ‘cleaning the buffer’ was actually causing the WordPress files to become dysfunctional and in the case of most javascript it was making the page impossible to view/use.

This post should be deleted to not create any more noise for other people having real problems not of their own making (unless some hosting providers might do similar things to the buffer when inserting iframes and ads).
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Problems occur with fresh install of 2.9.1 and again with 2.9.2 and again with 2.9.1 (screenshots from this attempt). The install is on a server running PHP 5.1.6.

The dashboard loaded fine and beautiful after the “5 minute install”. No errors, no problems. However going to any other admin page shows some error in my console.

For example:

jQuery is not defined
load-scripts.php?c=1&load=hoverIntent,common,jquery-color&ver=975a66473369e28f12fa81a4deb3836d()

unmatched ) in regular expression
edit-pages.php()edit-pages.php (line 21)
[Break on this error] try{convertEntities(inlineEditL10n);}catch(e){};

syntax error
edit-comments.php()edit-comments.php (line 17)
[Break on this error] 1){var F=this.pushStack([],”find”,E);F…!o.support.noCloneEvent&&(){eturn F}el

missing ) after condition
plugins.php()plugins.php (line 27)
[Break on this error] reMenuState()},restoreMenuState:functi…old”)}elt)}”c”==bity)(a(rousemhasClas(

jQuery is not defined
load-scripts.php?c=1&load=hoverIntent,common,jquery-color&ver=975a66473369e28f12fa81a4deb3836d()

wpGears is not defined
load-scripts.php?c=1&load=hoverIntent,common,jquery-color&ver=975a66473369e28f12fa81a4deb3836d()load-s…eb3836d (line 1)
[Break on this error] (function(a){a.fn.hoverIntent=function….mouseover(b).mouseout(b)}})(jQuery);
load-s…eb3836d (line 1)
jQuery is not defined

Upon returning the dashboard, either by clicking the dashboard nav button or logging out and back in, the dashboard is messed up (see screenshot: https://screencast.com/t/ZTVhYzExN )

The “Appearance > Editor” screen appears to be lacking any CSS styling whatever (see screenshot: https://screencast.com/t/NTk0Y2VmYzIt ). And that page has the following two console errors:

jQuery is not defined
theme-editor.php()theme-editor.php (line 146)
[Break on this error] try{convertEntities(commonL10n);}catch(e){};
theme-editor.php (line 146)

Add New Themes screen and Plugins > Editor do the same thing as the theme editor mentioned and shown in the screenshot above.

And as I mentioned at the beginning every admin screen displays some error as sampled above.

I’m not sure what can be wrong. In searching for various combinations of “wordpress admin dashboard javascript syntax error jquery” I found similar problems whose solutions did nothing. I found someone else who had posted screenshots that looked like my problem exactly but no solution came with those.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.