Clean URLs in Drupal Don't Work

On a recent upgrade of Drupal, I ran into the following error:

/drupal/admin/settings/clean-urls was not found on this server.

It turns out that the directory where Drupal was installed (/home/web/drupal-5.7) was missing it's .htaccess file. The contents should have been:

#
# Apache/PHP/Drupal settings:
#

# Protect files and directories from prying eyes.
<FilesMatch "(\.(engine|inc|info|install|module|profile|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(\.php)?|xtmpl)|code-style\.pl|Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template)$">
 Order allow,deny
</FilesMatch>

# Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Customized error messages.
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

# Set the default handler.
DirectoryIndex index.php

# Override PHP settings. More in sites/default/settings.php
# but the following cannot be changed at runtime.

# PHP 4, Apache 1.
<IfModule mod_php4.c>
    php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
    php_value register_globals                0
    php_value session.auto_start              0
</IfModule>

# PHP 4, Apache 2.
<IfModule sapi_apache2.c>
    php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
    php_value register_globals                0
    php_value session.auto_start              0
</IfModule>

# PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2.
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
    php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
    php_value register_globals                0
    php_value session.auto_start              0
</IfModule>

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled.
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
    # Enable expirations.
    ExpiresActive On
    # Cache all files for 2 weeks after access (A).
    ExpiresDefault A1209600
    # Do not cache dynamically generated pages.
    ExpiresByType text/html A1
</IfModule>

# Various rewrite rules.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on

    # If your site can be accessed both with and without the prefix www. you
    # can use one of the following settings to force user to use only one option:
    #
    # If you want the site to be accessed WITH the www. only, adapt and
    # uncomment the following:
    # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
    # RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/ [L,R=301]
    #
    # If you want the site to be accessed only WITHOUT the www. prefix, adapt
    # and uncomment the following:
    # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
    # RewriteRule .* http://example.com/ [L,R=301]

    # Modify the RewriteBase if you are using Drupal in a subdirectory and
    # the rewrite rules are not working properly.
    #RewriteBase /drupal

    # Rewrite old-style URLs of the form 'node.php?id=x'.
    #RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    #RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    #RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=([^&]+)$
    #RewriteRule node.php index.php?q=node/view/%1 [L]

    # Rewrite old-style URLs of the form 'module.php?mod=x'.
    #RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    #RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    #RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^mod=([^&]+)$
    #RewriteRule module.php index.php?q=%1 [L]

    # Rewrite current-style URLs of the form 'index.php?q=x'.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

# $Id: .htaccess,v 1.81 2007/01/09 09:27:10 dries Exp $

This would have "fixed" the clean-URL issue I was having with Drupal. I know that many of the lines above are commented out. If I go back to Drupal I'll have to investigate why they were commented out.