Thanks Logician, but I followed what the tutorial said to do (which was slightly different to the other methods) and still no go - the .htaccess file in my images directory is blocking my forums from loading files from the images directory and any sub-directories.
Like the PHP and CGI solution, this method relies on the HTTP_REFERER being properly set by the visitor's browser. A number of modern browsers as well as some of the anonymous surfing proxies allow the user to change this header. These browsers or proxies will thus either transmit HTTP_REFERER headers that have some user-specified value or not bother to transmit them at all. There are also buggy browsers around that unpredictably transmit the wrong HTTP_REFERER header on occasion.
the problem is the mod_rewrite is not installed on the server, and not installed on many server due to abuse, i need help asap, it cost me £155 this month, i really dont know what to do...