Web Forms :: Asp Menu Working Fine In The Dev Environment But Not On Server

I am sorry to be asking what is probably a really stupid question, but i have a problem with my asp menu, when i run it on my dev machine(thru vs2010) it works perfectly, all the menu's are displayed correctly with the correct child items in the correct order but when i publish it to the server all the menu items become flat and take up the whole page. I am populating the menu using a reentrant function as follows to call the function and add the menus i am using

Dim childMenuItems As List(Of MenuItem) = CreateMenuLevel(0, uniquemenulist)
childMenuItems.ForEach(Sub(n) NavigationMenu.Items.Add(n))
Public Function CreateMenuLevel(ByVal parentId As Integer, ByVal menulist As List(Of MenuList)) As List(Of MenuItem)
Dim menuItems As New List(Of MenuItem)
For Each menuListItem As MenuList In menulist.Where(Function(n) n.ParentId = parentId)
Dim MenuItem As New MenuItem
If (Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(menuListItem.PagePath)) Then
MenuItem.NavigateUrl = menuListItem.PagePath
End If
MenuItem.Text = menuListItem.MenuName
MenuItem.Selectable = True
MenuItem.Enabled = True
menuItems.Add(MenuItem)
Dim childMenuItems As List(Of MenuItem) = createMenuLevel(menuListItem.MenuId, menulist)
childMenuItems.ForEach(Sub(n) MenuItem.ChildItems.Add(n))
Next
Return menuItems
End Function

now as i say this all works fine in the dev environment so i dont think its a coding issue unless i am missing something mad.

server 2003 x64
iis 6.0
asp 4.0.303.19
relevant .net 4 framework packs installed
dev environment
visual studio 2010

am using the same browser for to check both dev and server