Partial success!!

I discovered that the default .htaccess file was prevent my browser(s) from accessing the admin pages. I have temporarily renamed the file, and now I can see access the Admin functions as I should. But.. (big BUT), does anyone have a correct .htaccess file I can use? I don't want to leave this thing wide open.

Thanks in advance...

New to Abantecart, but familiar with PCs, networking, and MySQL.

I downloaded ver 1.2 twice, and can view the demo website with no problems. I have a testbed set up on a Windows PC, with Xampp. I have other database applications running successfully on Xammp, and find it to be a good 'lab' for testing.

After I downloaded the zip file, I opened it with WinZip. All the files unpacked, but I noticed a few of them had an error in writing the 'date', but other than that, the file looked intact.

The demo store runs fine, and looks great! When I try to log in to the admin page, there is no graphical GUI, just a few fields of text to log in. I am able to log in successfully, but again, all I see is a single column of text fields on the left hand side of the screen. I am able to click on some of the labels (topics), and they do seem to accept data, and bring me to another 'screen'. The new screen is also just a text screen, no GUI.

As mentioned above, I tried downloading the program twice, and have 'unzipped' the files at least 4 times now, with the same result. I'm obviously overlooking something pretty basic, but I don't see it. I have used the search function on this site for over an hour, but I cannot find a solution.

Any clues would be appreciated!!  Thanks.