For some reason my install of XAMPP didn’t have mod_rewrite automatically enabled? Not really sure why  but basically below are the instructions on how to enable .htaccess mod_rewrite in xampp.

1. Go to the directory of installation <C:\xampp>\apache\conf

2. Open and edit httpd.conf in a text editor

3. Find the line which contains

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

and (uncomment) change to

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
  1. Find all occurrences of:
AllowOverride None

and change to

AllowOverride All

I think it appears 2 or 3 times on the configuration file.

5. Restart xampp

That’s it you should be good to go.