CodeIgniter 1.7.2 + XAMPP 1.7.3 + .htacess problems

[eluser]nickstaroba[/eluser]
Ok, so I started over with this because XAMPP 1.7.3 was giving me errors from the control panel. One thing I didn't note is that I'm only trying to get this set up on my local environment.

I installed a fresh copy of XAMPP 1.7.0 and created the directory "www" under htdocs as suggested above. I've put the install of CI into this directory so it's localhost/www/index.php, localhost/www/systems, etc.

Again, the config.php is default but for the following two lines:

Code:

$config['base_url']    = "http://localhost/www/";
$config['index_page'] = "";

I followed the tutorial here:
http://codeigniter.com/wiki/mod_rewrite/



I tried the following in the .htaccess file located in "www":

Code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /www/

    #Removes access to the system folder by users.
    #Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
    #previously this would not have been possible.
    #'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]
    
    #When your application folder isn't in the system folder
    #This snippet prevents user access to the application folder
    #Submitted by: Fabdrol
    #Rename 'application' to your applications folder name.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^application.*
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

    #Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
    #such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
    #request to index.php
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
    # If we don't have mod_rewrite installed, all 404's
    # can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal.
    # Submitted by: ElliotHaughin

    ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
</IfModule>

and

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /www/
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|scripts|css|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

These are the settings I've tried in httpd.conf

Code:

<Directory "C:/Documents and Settings/Nick Staroba/My Documents/My Work/Web Design/X2/htdocs">
Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

and

Code:

<Directory "C:/Documents and Settings/Nick Staroba/My Documents/My Work/Web Design/X2/htdocs">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Still getting errors 500 and 404 errors depending on which files I'm using...

Is http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/rewrite/a good place to study up on this?