When I login to admin panel I get sent to:
http://example.com/index.php/admin/index/index/key/**********
and get 404 error
but when I remove "/index.php" from the url:
http://example.com/admin/index/index/key/**********
it works but every time I click a link in admin panel the index.php comes back
I am pretty much having the opposite problem as this guy:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10474740/how-to-remove-index-php-from-urls
whereas his links did not add index.php to the url, but his pages required them, my links are adding index.php to the url when the pages do not accept them
Best Answer
I gave up on finding help online, so I took it upon myself to find the answer. I eventually made an edit that fixed everything also note, if you have magento installed in a subdirectory, make sure folders that contain the magento installation do not have an .htaccess of their own or else it will conflict with the .htaccess in your magento root
Here is my magento root .htaccess: