Error 404 when setting URL in mod_rewrite

Question

Good

I am trying to change the URL’s on my website as the example below the file. htaccess but I end up with the localhost "Object not found, Error 404" page.

Here is the code for my . htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^country=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^country/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)*/?$ country.php?country=$1 [NC,R]

In other words, am I trying to change the country.php page? country=Italy to country/Italy.

Apache http.config has been changed with this code:

<Directory />
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all   

And . htaccess is in the htdocs folder of Xampp.

Thank you for your help.