Just been tracking SilverStripe development for the last few months and noted that it requires mod_rewrite to be enabled as part of the installation.

Whilst this may be good for server rollouts as Apache dependence is a good thing, it does upset my local development environment as XAMPP running mod_rewrite, with SilverStripe and about two dozen other CMSes on the same base does tend to throw a few hiccups.

Dev specs:
XAMPP 1.55 for Wintel

Is there any way that SilverStripe can be installed without dependence on mod_rewrite ?

Another way to run it is to set your ErrorDocument to sapphire/main.php. It's a bit of a hack, but it works on Lighttpd at least.

For example
ErrorDocument 404 /base/url/sapphire/main.php

It can be a little slower, because any 404s for images/scripts/css/etc will be passed through the sapphire run-time.

Let me know how you get on.