No 404 on existing folders

Hey all,

I noticed that when a user browses to example.com/application for instance, he doesn't get a 404 error page but instead get "‹ãRàâxŽl" as output.

The htaccess I use is

Code:

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|assets|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

this seems to be an issue on all subfolders. If a folder doesnt exist I get a 404 error, but if a folder exists like applications it screws me over

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

PS. The error log gives

Code:

ERROR - 2015-04-12 15:50:19 --> 404 Page Not Found --> application

but yet doesn't show me a 404 error page...