well, the problem is that I cant get it to WORK!! can anybody offer me any help on the way to make this effort successful? im ripping my hair out... and thats not a good thing.. my hair is thin enough!

thanks for any help in advance!

I didn't know you could use htaccess with IIS im guessing you cant and thats why it does not work. What are you trying to accomplish? password protection?

I have never heard of someone getting htaccess to work w/ISS 6. you = screwed
sorry man

htaccess, is an extension of the apache settings for use in individual directories, so that users could change settings specific to them (not any old setting, which settings are allowed are defined in the main config), but anyway, the most common use of htaccess is with password protection, I assume thats what you wanted, the way to go about that is to set NTFS permisions on your web files, and then make sure that guest access is not allowed. this is done in the IIS snap-in for that site/dir

ahhhh well, that sucks heh.. thanks for the info... im just gonna build a linux server with apache.. im sick of this IIS shit

pardon me for not knowing apache.

If I understand you correctly, this extension is a layer of protection to isolate access to specific folders in a webserver?

If so, is this not the principle of IIS and NTFS drives?

well dave you are not totally right. htaccess is a unix (and linux) feature not an apache thing!
Apache is also for Windows avaiable, but you can't use htaccess!

EEERRR. yeah u can use htaccess in windows, i do it all the time. and even tho ive never used Linux/Unix and apache on those platforms, I think it is an Apache thing.

[edit]
I will take this a little bit further and tell you how to get it working.
In your HTTPD.conf, you should have a setting along the lines of "AllowOverride None" in a directory container usualy root "/" this would need to be changed to "AllowOverride AuthConfig" so that ".htaccess" files are read for Auth information, this works on windows for certain as I have used it lots of times. Anyway, use the program that came with your apache setup called "htpasswd.exe" this will generate the ".htpasswd" files needed for auth and then use this site to tell you how to put the ".htaccess" together.

Sorry if I sounded off in my reply PaxTrax, its just I know my shit and don't like others telling me different

oh and yes it could be a Unix/Linux thing as it says:and its probably been borrowed, but ive never heard of it out of the context of the Apache Webserver so I really don't know

Also, as an example, connect to my server (mysql.fowla.kicks-ass.net) its my database Admin on my windows server protected by .htaccess Auth, Press cancel and you will see the server signature "Win32"

--- Dave