If Permalinks are enabled in WordPress 2.0 or higher, the following code usually is generated to be placed in a .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine Off RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule>
It happened to me, however, that as soon as this .htaccess was active, the server returned an error code of 403: Access Denied. In this case, just comment out or remove the lines <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> and </IfModule>:
#<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine Off RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] #</IfModule>
This worked for me.
PS: If you get an error of 500: Server Error, this probably means that mod_rewrite is not enabled on your server. Ask you provider to enable it.