Removing index.php from URL

I have installed SEF advance on my Joomla 1.5 site. Everything is installed ok and i currently have URLs like

http://www.?????.com/index.php/contact/
http://www.?????.com/index.php/email/

I was wondering how can i remove the index.php from the URL. I have tried to create an alias but this still shows up with the index.php in the URL. When i enable "Use Apache mod_rewrite" in my global configuration i get rid of the index.php but then when i click on the links i get a blank page.

Thanks for any help.

Yes, you must enable "Use Apache mod_rewrite" in global configurations.
If you get blank page then it's maybe the server issue, maybe it doesn't have mod_rewrite. Disable SEF Advance 2008 and get the built-in SEF to work with mod_rewrite first.

Got that sorted. Added the following lines to my .htaccess file.

---

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/component/option,com) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.htm|\.php|\.html|/[^.]*)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php

---

Everything worked perfectly after  that. I'm new to this so not sure if it will cause other problems but working ok for now.

File permissions on my .htaccess file were not set up properly so this is what may have caused the problem in the first place.