I need help ... pleeeeeease !!!

I have inherited a client using cubcart. The previous webmaster uploaded the site and the db (backup) to the server and has sort of wash their hands of the whole thing. The client has no idea of how their site/cart works so I am floundering ..

I have the db loaded and the cart appears to be loaded properly as it displays the inventory from the database .. my problem is when you try and purchase a product, all that gets displayed is "There are no items in your shopping cart!'and the product is not added to the cart.

I don't even know what version of cube cart is running.

Does anyone have an idea what I might be missing???

Well the obvious - check what version you are running. It tells you when you log into admin.

someone else had this problem and found the javascript (js) folder was missing, so I would download a clean copy of cubecart and put the files on your local computer so you can compare and see if anything is missing.

Inheriting things is never good - you might want to download the latest 3.0.15 version of cubecart and do a fresh install and import your database into it so you are sure it's installed correctly. (if the database was created on an older version, follow the upgrade database scripts for each version between).