Runway throwing 404 errors

It is a pretty basic site, there are zero add-ons and I am not using any listing and details pages. It's just about 6 directories that have about 5-10 pages in each folder.

Here is my .htaccess file you will notice that runway is currently commented out at the moment so that the page will load.

Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks

# Perch Runway
RewriteEngine On
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/admin 
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteRule .* /admin/core/runway/start.php [L] 

### REMOVE .PHP AND ADD SLASH ###
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /[^?\s]+\.php
RewriteRule (.*)\.php$ /$1/ [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/)$
RewriteRule (.*)$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*)/$ $1.php [L]

The first thing I did was move the index.php file to the pages directory and renamed it home.php and added the runway runtime at the top.

Then I removed the index.php from the root of the site, then I went into the page options and choose the home template and changed the path to /

Then I get on the home page.

Sorry, that page could not be found.

but its not the traditional 404 it is coming from the /pages/errors/404.php file

Yes, no matter what method or what rules I use, I still get the 404 error message that is driven from the /pages/errors/404.php file

So I know that 2.7.1 was working on another site so I downgraded this from 2.7.2 to 2.7.1 and now the 404 error goes away and everything with the router works. I don't know if there was a bug or if I just had a bad install/upload of files that was causing it to go haywire. But this has now been sorted.

I have this same problem, I install Runway and everything is completely fine. But it just can't see any of the master pages.

My .htaccess file is exactly how it is in the docs.