I just tried editing an item, through front and back end, and am left with random characters being inserted in the code. first it was something like \quou; now i'm getting back slashes anywhere there is a apostrophe or quotation mark. please help. I should also mention that it did not matter if i used JCE or CodeMirror, i still had this problem

That is because the src path of your image is invalid. You should use slash (/) between the folders and not backslash (\).

I'm not that ignorant.
Anyway, i found the cause. magic quotes was turned on. For all those who may have this issue in the future, add magic_quotes_gpc = off to php.ini.

Sorry for that, sometimes we all get away.