.htaccess file in albums/.users ?!?!

Got everything loaded & configured... When I upload a picture, all I see is red x's for the images, and it's NOT c11!

I've checked & rechecked the path, and even dropped the test.php into the albums directory & checked the path that way... Noproblem there.

I think I read somewhere that a user found a .htaccess file in his /albums/.users directory, deleted it, and everything worked fine.

Problem is, I can't delete the file via FTP, keeps giving me a permission denied error, and I can't chmod it either... permission denied.

Tried to delete it through the control panel at Lunarpages, and it goes through the motions of deleting, but it's still there.

I tried to upload a blank .htaccess file & overwrite, but same error, and the error log from uploading pictures in debug mode shows no errors, and the picture, and generated thumbnails do show up in the users directory...

Here's part of the error log from the server:

[Sun Jan 4 19:53:32 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/albums/album01/Tribal_Spear.highlight.jpg
[Sun Jan 4 19:53:08 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 19:53:08 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/albums/album01/Tribal_Spear.thumb.jpg
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:45 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:45 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:44 2004] [error] (2)No such file or directory: Incorrect permissions on webroot "/home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_pvt" and webroot's _vti_pvt directory in FrontPageAlias().
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:15 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:15 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:14 2004] [error] (104)Connection reset by peer: Incorrect permissions on webroot "/home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_pvt" and webroot's _vti_pvt directory in FrontPageAlias().
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:14 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:14 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:14 2004] [error] (104)Connection reset by peer: Incorrect permissions on webroot "/home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_pvt" and webroot's _vti_pvt directory in FrontPageAlias().
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:13 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:13 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:13 2004] [error] (104)Connection reset by peer: Incorrect permissions on webroot "/home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_pvt" and webroot's _vti_pvt directory in FrontPageAlias().
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:12 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:12 2004] [error] [client 12.228.221.179] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc
[Sun Jan 4 19:07:12 2004] [error] (2)No such file or directory: Incorrect permissions on webroot "/home/deckns2/public_html/_vti_pvt" and webroot's _vti_pvt directory in FrontPageAlias().
[Sun Jan 4 18:59:36 2004] [error] [client 12.230.151.37] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun Jan 4 18:59:36 2004] [error] [client 12.230.151.37] File does not exist: /home/deckns2/public_html/favicon.ico

Any ideas? I'm at the end of my rope on this one, acan somebody please help?

Thanks!

Operating system Linux
Kernel version 2.4.20-27.8smp
Apache version 1.3.29 (Unix)
PERL version 5.8.1
Path to PERL /usr/bin/perl
Path to sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail
PHP version 4.3.4