.htaccess file can't find 404 ErrorDocument - apache

Question

The .htaccess file I have is unable to find my 404.html document in a sub-folder called "error". The line in particular is:
ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.html
However, if I place 404.html in the same directory as .htaccess and change the line to:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html --- It works!
I'm using XAMPP for Windows if that helps, and in my httpd.conf file, the relevant directives are set as follows (I realize there is some redundancy):
<Directory />
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
Also, my DocumentRoot is set to "C:/xampp/htdocs", and I'v tried various paths to access the "error" directory--none work:
ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.html
ErrorDocument 404 /flchi/error/404.html
ErrorDocument 404 /sites/flchi/error/404.html
ErrorDocument 404 /htdocs/sites/flchi/error/404.html
Oh, and one final thing for what it's worth--I'm using virtual hosts. Here's the relevant bits:
<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost flchi.local>
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/sites/flchi"
ServerName flchi.local
ServerAlias flchi.local
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs/sites/flchi">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

This happens because of naming conflict - default Apache configuration already defines virtual path for /error, affecting all virtual hosts globally. It's done in config file xampp/apache/conf/extra/httpd-multilang-errordoc.conf. Location /error, therefore shadows your /error subdirectory:
Alias /error/ "C:/xampp/apache/error/"
It should work if you rename your 'error' sub-directory to something else - for example, error2.
ErrorDocument 404 /error2/404.html