Strange issue with index.php

This is for the latest version - v1.5.3.1 and a clean install. There are no 3rd party modules installed except for vqmod in an attempt to solve this problem

If I go to the site - e.g. http://www.site.com, i receive the error message "The page you requested cannot be found!"

If I go to the site http://www.site.com/index.php, the front page renders as expected. EVERYTHING works as expected in all cases except when I leave the /index.php off of the URL. I have SEO URL's turned on and they work great. It's just the non-index.php base url does not work...

I cannot provide a link to the site since it's not published - publicly viewable at the moment.

Any ideas??

It's a server configuration issue. Try adding:

DirectoryIndex index.php

to your .htaccess file.

Thank you for your suggestion. However this did not work. I don't believe it is a server configuration issue (at least not a misconfigured DirectoryIndex directive) since I can go to both /admin and /admin/index.php with no problems. If the DirectoryIndex directive wasn't set, /admin would render a similar page, no?

Don't know. Research the issue and post what you find. Ultimately it's not an OpenCart but server problem.

I have come up with a solution.

Removing .htaccess and setting Use SEO URL's: to no makes it work. Obviously I figured that somehow I messed with the .htaccess file and screwed something up so I downloaded the latest version of Opencart and used that .htaccess file directly and the same thing happens - no workie. At least it's working, however I would REALLy like cleaner URL's..

I'm having the same problem as you, except I can't access either the store front or the admin page without adding in /index.php to the end of the url.

did you ever find a solution?