Thanks everyone, I figured out the problem finally and everything seems fine now. The whole thing turned out to be quite silly actually. I had changed my system clock to 2004 for some reason and then had forgotten to change it back. Somehow that was what caused all the problems and as soon as I changed the clock back to the correct date the cookies started working just fine. Style XP did not like this and started acting up is a whole new story.

Thanks all.