Cannot access admin area, receive a 500 Internal Server Error

[usr50]

I experienced the identical error when I installed 1.39h in February.
to gain access to the admin I added the following line to the .htaccess file in the renamed (admin) folder

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

[Kim]

Which host are you using? Is it Linux or Windows?

[crewgirl]

Thank you for your responses. I deleted and reinstalled zencart this afternoon and now I receive a blank page.
I am using windows, but it occurs to me that the server might not be. I'm not sure how to find that info, or even if it matters. I'm going to search the site for more information (perhaps someone else received a blank page as well), but any help you could give in this thread would be appreciated.

[crewgirl]

Sorry for the multiple posts. After reading some other threads I felt I should supply a bit more information.
The website is hosted by solid-hosting.net. I use cPanel to access the administrative area of my website. The URL for the website is www.crewgirlracing.com. The URL to access the store side of ZenCart is www.crewgirlracing.com/store and to access the admin side is www.crewgirlracing.com/store/letmein/. I used Filezilla and Notepad++ as recommended in the set up instructions. I am on my 4th install of ZenCart and have double checked all the changes I was instructed to make. I attempted to use the debugging utility, but was unsucessful. I have heard wonderful things about ZenCart and would really like to use it for the ecommerce portion of my website please help me straighten this out!!!

[usr50]

crewgirl,
no need to install/uninstall. did you add the 'directoryIndex index,php' to the admin area .htaccess ?
.htaccess is folder specific and will tell the admin folder to search and open 'index .php' which is the login page
I see your store side works . the admin side is a config or permissions issue. and if you have a 'cpanel' you're on linux type server

[crewgirl]

Thank you usr50. One more question, where is the htaccess file that I'm supposed to change located. I've found one in store/includes, another in store/letmein/, and in store/letmein/includes. I know that I've made changes in all 3 places during the install process. I'm afraid that making incorrect changes will only make things worse for me in the long run.
Also, while typing this, it occurs to me that I don't exactly know how to add this line of code. I'm going to assume that I will need to open it with Notepad++ but where in the file do I add it, and what should it say exactly (there seems to be a bunch of stuff in capital letters, parentheses, and quotation marks, and I won't even pretend to know why).

I'm sorry if I seem obtuse about this. The sad truth is, I feel like I'm trying to navigate a foreign planet.

[usr50]

assuming you are running on a linux platform -you will find it in the renamed (admin) folder.( store / letmein )
and use notepad and copy and paste the line at the bottom after the last line of text in the .htaccess.

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
then save & upload the .htaccess overwriting the previous .htaccess.

*in the off chance you are running windows server IIS you can see a recent post called 'what have I done' for windows instructions
without actually seeing the install It is difficult to troubleshoot BUT having the same error as you this add to the .htaccess will bring back the admin login.
post your results.