I am setting up SEF and I remember I tried doing this a few years back and it was too technical so I quit and deleted everything.

I thought I would try this again, thinking it's been a few years and it certainly has gotten easier!
NOPE!

First of all, none of my content (other than the front page) or any of my links worked

So then I set the htaccess to 666 thinking that was the problem,

I then went back to the manual to continue with the configuration and when I tried to enable rewrite, my website crashed and I got an internal error and I am not able to access my Joomla! admin

Can You help me please???????

I know I can pay to have this installed, but I paid for the component-I should not have to pay for the service.

Hello,

500 Internal server error means error in the .htaccess file.
Either some of the directive is not supported or there is a typo.

More at
www.artio.net/faqs/artio-joomsef/trouble...alling-the-component

Ok, so that was fixed, now how do all my articles, and links (menu items) work? I get the front page, but when I check a link, any link, I get the 404 page?
I have gone through the manual a zillion times and I can't see where all my info went-of course it is "contents" in my admin area, but no way to navigate to it from the front page?
PLEASE HELP! I have been down for 4 days now!