I have pretty much the same prob being described this SO thread
following response found there, copied this line of code
#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
into httpd.conf, then re-strated Apache 2, but it didn’t work at all, got an error, like when server is not turned on… (other sites, which don’t use .htaccess and normally work fine, also wouldn’t load…)
(but there’a another line similar to this one already in httpd.conf:
now I have been running little sites on my php env locally, w/o .htaccess, everything works fine… (php env is Apache 2 & PHP 5.3.26, which all came with my mac…) but now am having probs w/this one b/c of the .htaccess file…
now for this particular site (also duplicated what’s up on server, to run locally, just like it’s described in SO thread above…) the .htaccess is used for navigation, the home page loads fine, but when click on any item in nav menu get a 404… content of .htaccess:
and it didn’t make any difference… server still works, but my site with the .htaccess file won’t work (again: index.php loads, but when try to navigate to other pages I get 404’s…)