No URI present. Default controller set

I found one dumb thing I did. I had the hostname for the server set in a comment so that's why it would report as 'localhost' instead of "bob" but changing that didn't fix the problem except, now, echoing $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']; gives me "bob" instead of 'localhost'. I still get the error of "No URI present".

I tried setting $config['base_url'] to nothing, '', to just slash, '/', and 'http://10.xxx.xxx.xxx/' to no avail. I'm still stuck.

In this original config, $config['index_page'] is set to '' but this is an existing, working site so I'm hesitate to blame that. I did try setting it to 'index.php', again to no avail.

EDIT: I'm able to view php_info and a html file I put in the root directory of CI and view that in the browser.