Protecting wp-admin w/htaccess and htpasswd

So I’m trying to password protect this directory with .htaccess and htpasswd and with each attempt I get the same results: A browser request to https://mydomain.com/wp-admin results in a WordPress-generated “Not Found” error. I think my syntax in the .htaccess file is correct but to make sure I even went thru the control panel that my hosting provider makes available to generate the .htaccess file for password protected directories

Thanks for any suggestions!

Chuck