.htaccess and .htpasswd difficulties in WinXP

[lead2gold]

Forgive me for sounding like a n00bie but i for the life of me can't get the .hpasswd and .htaccess file to work. here is what i have:

Apache 2.0.54

http.conf
[code]AccessFileName .htaccess

#
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being
# viewed by Web clients.
#
<Files ~ "^\.ht">
    Order allow,deny
    Deny from all
</Files>[/code]

.htaccess
[code]AuthUserFile c:/www/.htpasswd
AuthName "Password Protected"
AuthType basic


<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

<Files .htpasswd>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>[/code]

.htpasswd (assume this one is valid, i used the htpasswd utility that comes with apache to generate it.
the site is infact located in c:\www\ and for the time being, both files are in this directory.

I can't for the life of me get a password prompt to appear :)

What am i doing wrong?

[lead2gold]

/bump (for hope)

I should add, that basically even the a .htaccess file the page just displays normally. It doesn't even attempt to produce a popup box..