Help with Permalinks – Windows host server running Apache

I’ll preface this with the usual “please excuse my ignorance I am new to this stuff” disclaimer.

I am trying to set up permalinks. I host my own web site on a Windows 2000 server running Apache 2. Everything was working peachy except permalinks initially (WordPress version is 1.5.1.3), and trying to set up permalinks didn’t break anything, just didn’t work. After searching for help on why my permalinks weren’t working I ended up editing my Apache http.conf file and adding:

<Directory “C:/wwwroot/wordpress”>
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

This didn’t work. I can’t remember what that caused to happen because the next thing I tried made things even worse. Based on another post I tried deleting the .htaccess file in my wordpress directory. Now when I go to the site admin and try to update permalink options my whole site goes down and I get 403 permission denied errors until I go back and delete the new .htaccess file.

I have seen posts saying to chmod the .htaccess file but I am using a Windows server. Mod_rewrite is installed. I’m not sure what else is pertinent but I could definitely use some help!

Thanks in advance,
LW