Admin 404's after migration, tried every solution I've found with no success

Question

I'm trying to help a friend migrate his magento site to a new host. I exported the DB, zipped the site files and moved everything over. There was a hiccup with the SQL on import, but I found a fix.

The DNS propagated and the front end works great, but the admin gives: https://sitedomain.com/index.php/admin. I try just /admin, and it redirects to that with this error:

The server can not find the requested page:

sitedomain.com/index.php/admin (port 443)

I've tried every fix you can find via google - running this:

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
UPDATE `core_store` SET store_id = 0 WHERE code='admin';
UPDATE `core_store_group` SET group_id = 0 WHERE name='Default';
UPDATE `core_website` SET website_id = 0 WHERE code='admin';
UPDATE `customer_group` SET customer_group_id = 0 WHERE customer_group_code='NOT LOGGED IN';
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;

...clearing caches, setting admin SSL to 0 from 1, nothing.

Answer 1

Do make sure that the default ".htaccess" file for Magento is copied over as well as it is always missed out due to it being a hidden dot file.

If you are sure that the proper ".htaccess" file is in place, make sure that the server's mod_rewrite is working properly.