Help needed with .htaccess files

Respected Sirs,
Iam a newbie in using apache.Iam using apache on WinNt
for web hosting.Now I want to perform access control to
certain directories by means of .htaccess files.

My problem is the webserver does not even read the .htaccess file which i have placed in the directory which i want to protect.I have given Allowoverride AuthConfig in my httpd.conf file. I've also created my password file using htpasswd utility .
I read it somewhere that in WinNT the .htaccess file
should not be named as .htaccess and should be just
htaccess.I tried even that and also changed "AccessFileName" to htaccess in the httpd.conf but still no result.

The interesting point is if i give the following code in my httpd.conf file

<Directory "c:\training">
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Directory"
AuthUserFile "D:\9ias\Apache\Apache\bin\mypasswd"
require user alfred
</Directory>

my access control works perfectly fine.

So what is the solution??.how to use it with .htaccess???

Also after the user is authenticated for a particular directory i want him to be again authenticated when he tries to access a particular file present inside that directory.I've tried using <Files>,<FilesMatch>,<LocationMatch> in httpd.conf but no use.

Maybe iam doing things in the wrong way due to my inexperience with apache.

So pls help and sorry for any disturbance caused.

Thanx,
Alfred