URL rewriting won't work unless I add index.php to the query string?

Question

I've been struggling forever trying to understand why I can't get this to work. I have Windows Server 2008 r2 with Helicon APE installed and having several rewrite errors.

Currently, the frontpage and blog articles are working (even with the pretty permalinks) but clicking on any other page/category/ or archive redirects you back to the index (home) of the blog. I've been in contact with the helicon guys and the latest message they told me was:

The thing is that the following URLs don't work either (although Ape is not involved):

example.com/rental-blog/?paged=2

example.com/rental-blog/?cat=4

But if you add 'index.php' before the query string, they start working fine. Please figure out why this happens.

As soon as you make these links working the .htaccess for permalinks will work fine as well.

Does anyone have ANY idea where to look into troubleshooting this? Is there a common IIS setting I may have missed? I've almost read the internet from cover to cover trying to figure it out.

For what it's worth, the htaccess in the blog's subdirectory is:

# Helicon Ape version 3.0.0.84
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /rental-blog/
#RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) /rental-blog/index.php/$1 [L]
# END WordPress

Thanks so much in advance

Answer 1

I would personally suggest you to use these rules instead:

# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule (.*) index.php?$1 [L,QSA]
# END WordPress

These rules are simpler and faster. The problem why your original rules didn't worked are probably because inxed.php file is not listed as a default document for your web site.