Editing pages malfunction

Suddenly I have lost the ability to upload images and send them to editor from my wp admin edit/post page. I can browse for the file on my desktop, select it but When I press upload, I get this exact error: “The uploaded file could not be moved to . ” I’ve even tried putting the images directly into the WP uploads folder in my ftp but they will not appear in the browse list once I’m back to the editor. I’m confused, have I inadvertently changed something in WP functions? Is it a problem with my webhost, or with my ftp client, which now contains a new folder outside my html folder called .bash_history ? Can anyone tell me where to even start in trying to trace what caused this problem?