I have read it and done everything there very carefully already.
If you mean, do the default links work when permalinks are disabled, then yes, it works. But I do not need to rename .htaccess for that to work.
Thanks for responding. I did what you suggested (permalinks were temporarily disabled already). I renamed my .htaccess file, but WordPress did not create a new one when trying to enable permalinks. Anyway, I still get a 404 error.
I have thoroughly read and tried everything relevant from the Using_Permalinks page.
