Joomla virtuemart The requested URL * was not found on this server.

This is a blog for the above problem for people who are trying to  set up virtuemart on their Jommla! installation.
Up until this point I had installed Virtuemart and it's demo  database and made a menu item that should go straight to a  catergory or product.



The first thing after getting the error message
'The requested URL * was not found on this server'  was to check  this call to the component to see if the store was working at  all?

Answer: YES - the store does work however when clicking on the  product links I get the requested URL not found message.


My next test was to turn SEF's off.  You can do this by going to  'site' on the top menu - go down to 'global configuration' and  head for SEO settings on the right hand side.  in your  administration panel.

ANSWER - in my case everything now works fine.  If it doesn't for  you then you probably need to install the main Virtuemart Module  and make sure its placed on all pages.  Check the manual section  '2.2. VirtueMart Installation' for more information.


This is not an ideal solution for me though as I do not want to  turn SEF's off so is there another solution that allows me to use  SEF's?


There is an extension called 'SEF router for Virtuemart (Joomla  1.5) Extension Specific Addon'  for VM - however this seems to  make no difference for me. 


What I don't understand though is that I'm using exactly the same  version etc as in my store for SEO Nort Cornwall and this site  works fine with SEF.  At this point I'm pretty stuck so am  thinking of starting the virtuemart installation from fresh to  see if that works.

Which doesn't work -  However I have a sneaky feeling it's because I'm working on a testing server, where a call to route doesn't work and I have to call index.php.  Therefore I am going to shelf this work- get the site working - go live and then solve this problem.  Hopefully therefore I'll have a solution here soon.