yes Aaron has pointed out that all paths in vmt's are relative to /materials. On top of that though i have no idea why you are having html tags in your vmt like that. here is standard custom one from my hl2dm folder:
"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "dm_pueblo/pueblo_stone1"
"$surfaceprop" "rock"
}
where the absolute path is
D:/Steam/steamapps/accountname/half-life 2 deathmatch/hl2mp/materials/dm_pueblo/pueblo_stone1.vmt
thers no 'div' 'pre' or anything else there, is that something that happened in yr post?