.htaccess file not being read on localhost

Question

My live site reads the .htaccess fine. I got 404.php and mod_rewrite working fine there, but on my localhost... nothing.

• PHPmyAdmin 3.1.5
• PHP 5.2.9-2
• Apache 2.2

My .htaccess is this:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^news/([0-9]+)-(.*)\.html$ news/index.php?id=$1 [L] 

Reading http://localhost/phpinfo.php reveals that mod_rewrite is turned on, but it doesn't work, neither does the 404.php page. The Apache error logs only reveal that the page was not found on this server.

My httpd.conf currently looks like this:

DocumentRoot "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs" <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks Order Allow,Deny Allow from 127.0.0.1 Deny from All </Directory> 

I can change it to any combination you want, but it won't do anything. Where else could the source of my headaches be? What am I missing?

Thanks, signed, noob (at technical stuff)

Answer 1

Try add

AllowOverride All 

inside tag.

Answer 2

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

This post pointed me to the answer, and the people were led out of the desert: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1608589/how-to-enable-htaccess-in-httpd-conf-on-xp

My file was saved as "htaccess" not ".htaccess". The first time I saved the file, I certainly added the dot, but Windows dropped it when saving the filename. Just now I opened it with Notepadd++ and renamed it ".htaccess" and violá!

Man, this should not be this difficult...