unable to use site template

A design company we have used have given me a wsp which I have uploaded to the solution gallery (test area) and activated. They are brand new to SP so quickly had to learn on the fly in order to deliver.

When I try to create a new site off the top level site - http://server/newsite I get "an error has occured" and it fails.

I went through the ULS log and found that it required 5 features to be activated. I activated these 5 "hidden" features using stsadm -o activatefeature and they all claimed success.

Now when I try to create the site I get these messages/errors in the log.

Applying template "BLANKINTERNET#0" to web at URL http://xxxxx/xxxx.
Preparing 9 features for activation

Failed to add data to list 'Master Page Gallery' in site http://xxxxx/xxxx: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: You cannot change moderation status and set other item properties
 at that same time.

Get a few of these (above)
The later: Feature Activation: Feature 'xxxxxListInstances' (ID: '387a1ba1-b45f-4744-b0a0-e5c0ade30722') was activated at URL http://xxxx/xxxx.

Failed to add the ghosted document with 0x80070050

<nativehr>0x8007009e</nativehr><nativestack></nativestack>The file "http://xxxx/xxxx/_catalogs/masterpage/ArticleLeft.aspx" is not checked out.  You must first check out this document before making changes.

Feature Activation: Threw an exception, attempting to roll back.  Feature 'xxxxPropertyBags' (ID: '36452abf-df98-4523-be02-9b0ee7e90393').  Exception: System.UriFormatException: Invalid URI: The URI scheme is not valid. 

Failed to activate site-scoped features for template 'BLANKINTERNET#0' in site 'http://xxxx/xxxx'.

<nativehr>0x8107058a</nativehr><nativestack></nativestack>Invalid URI: The URI scheme is not valid.

Deleting the web at http://xxxx/xxxx .

From the above errors I can't tell whether the problem is with our environment or with the template and/or content