.htaccess quagmire

So i was developing a drupal site and I needed to increase my memory limits so i tried to find out how to do that and support staff recommended following some instructions in the Wiki to modify my memory limits in my php.ini file (http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Custom_PHP.ini). When i finished making the changes as the instructions said my site no longer worked - it now says "You don't have permission to access / on this server. Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

I removed the .htaccess file and the cgi-bin folder as well as the other files that the wiki said that i had to create and modify, but nothing has changed but he site still doesn't work.

I need to get this site back up ASAP but i don't know what to do to make it work. Can anyone lend a hand here? Any past experience with this kind of issue? Can i create a new .htaccess that will make the site work again? Is there a default .htaccess entry that i can create that will bring the site back up?
- I NEED HELP.
Thanks

I believe that Drupal has a default .htaccess. Pull it from whatever backup you have, your source code, or if you're lucky, from the snapshot (if it exists).
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Snapshot_data_restoration

-Scott