.htaccess file mod rerwrite rule coming up with 404 page not found

[agallo]

I have a rather odd issue that I don't know how else to troubleshoot. I have a domain xxx.com with 2 subdomains a.xxx.com and b.xxx.com. The 2 sub domains are just development areas for the domain xxx, so essentially they are the exact same. The purpose of this post was to find an alternative approach to troubleshooting my issue. The issue is that the domain and sub domains all use the following .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^~(.+)$ profile.php?n=$1
ErrorDocument 404 /error404.php

 

If you go to a page that invokes the use of .htaccess file http://xxx.com/~profilename I get a generic 404 page not found comes up. However, the part that confuses me is that I should be getting a custom error page as if I went to http://xxx.com/somerandobs, but I don't?? Also, troubling me is that both sub domains are working perfectly. http://a.xxx.com/~profilename resolves to http://a.xxx.com/profile.php?n=profilename. I cannot think of anything outside of this domain that would cause this other than the .htaccess file. This was all working great on my legacy box before I swapped boxes. Thanks for the help in advance!

[dreamwest]

You dont need a root command in htaccess unless its a directory

 

ErrorDocument 404 error404.php

 

Or

 

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/error404.php