Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off

Watch that the directory where your web application is living, is not included in another parent directory which has restricted FollowSymLinks.

The solution is to enable FollowSymLinks at the top directory (parent directory) or move your web application to a directory outside of the scope of the "no FollowSymLinks" in parent directory.

For example, the next apache config could be a problem and surely it reproduces the problem:

    <VirtualHost *:80>      ...        <Directory "D:/">        Options Indexes      </Directory>      <Directory "D:/mywebfolder/">        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks      </Directory>      ...   </VirtualHost>

To avoid this problem:

    <VirtualHost *:80>      ...        <Directory "D:/">        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks      </Directory>      ...      ...   </VirtualHost>

Or move your D:/mywebfolder/ to another unit e.g. E:/mywebfolder

Note this from the apache docs for option:

Mixing Options with a + or - with those without is not valid syntax, and will be rejected during server startup by the syntax check with an abort.

You are mixing options with +/- and without in your block (i.e. see FollowSymLinks).

I had this same exact error showing up today on one of my sites where I had forgotten to add a "+" in front of an option. I added the "+" and it now works.

I had this issue and finally found that because I had php configured with fast-cgi rather than as an apache module, I had to update the \conf\extra\httpd-fcgid.conf and then added FollowSymLinksto this block

<Files ~ "\.php$">Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinksAddHandler fcgid-script .phpFcgidWrapper "d:/php/php-cgi.exe" .php</Files>

Hope this helps someone and saves the hours I wasted.