I'm new to CodeIgniter and routing.

I have a Login controller whose index() loads up a view to enter a username/password. In the view, the form has action="login/authenticate". Login->authenticate() determines if the login is valid or not. If it's valid, redirect('lobby'), if not redirect('login')

routes.php:

$route['default_controller'] = "login"

config.php:

$config['base_url'] = "http://localhost/dts/";
$config['index_page'] = "index.php";

The problem is that when i go to http://localhost/dts/ , click login, I am correctly (?) redirected to http://localhost/dts/login/authenticate but the browser says Object not found!. But when I go to http://localhost/dts/index.php/ (with trailing slash), it works correctly (I get redirected to http://localhost/dts/index.php/login/authenticate, and am logged in)

I tried removing "index.php" by using a .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

and it would no longer open even the http://localhost/dts/

I'm confused.. what's going on?