I had exactly the same problem.
Following the instructions for setting up a multisite network I also copied those lines to my wp-config file and to my .htaccess file I copied:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wp/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /wp/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
Since I had another multisite installation in another domain, I looked at that .htaccess and found different lines:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wp/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]
# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ – [L]
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(.*\.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
When I replaced the first set of lines with the second, everything worked.
