NEED HELP! htaccess returns Error 500

Hi all,

I’m trying to use RewriteRule to create clean url on my website. When I tested it locally, it returns:
Server error!

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there was an error in a CGI script.
If you think this is a server error, please contact the [U][COLOR=#0066cc]webmaster[/COLOR][/U].
Error 500

Can anyone please tell me how this could happen (I’m a newbie and never use htaccess before)?

Here’s an example of my htaccess script:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots\.txt$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://localhost/paula/index.php$1 [R=301,L]

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Regards,
Martin