XAMPP, CodeIgniter, and mod_rewrite (issues)

[eluser]Nicholas Bello[/eluser]
Let me begin by apologizing if this is not the correct forum to post my question. So if i'm wrong... sorry.

Now, onto the problem:
I have xampp installed on windows XP. I've enabled mod_rewrite in the apache conf file, and i'm using the .htaccess file i grabbed from the wiki here at http://codeigniter.com/wiki/mod_rewrite/ I have restarted my webserver and followed step by step instructions to enable .htaccess files and mod rewrite.

With all that in place my application resides at http://localhost/ci/

Now the problem i get is when i go to http://localhost/ci/login I get redirected to http://localhost/xampp/. When i go to http://localhost/ci/index.php/login i'm fine. Now i have my config variable set to $config['index_page'] = ""; and i have the htaccess file inplace.

I may have just been staring at this to long but i have no idea what's happening. I know it is not a CI problem and somewhere the issue has to lie with mod_rewrite but i'm fresh out of ideas. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nick