Upgrade to 7.1 - 500 internal server error

I followed all of the steps carefully for upgrading from dolphin 7.0.9 to 7.1.  Now I get The "HTTP 500 internal server error message on every page of my site.

Could this be a permissions issue?  Possibly the /inc file?  Please help!

Try to investigate your webserver log files for the exact couse of this error.

Well I searched around for logs a bit.  I'm not that fluent.  There's an access-logs folder on my server which is empty

check htaccess files they are know to cause 500 i errors

Which htaccess files should I check?  The ones in /cache ?  Honestly I don't even know what to look for in them.  I'm not a code wizard like a lot of dolphin users are. 

one in root
see if it matches to the one from downloaded pack

Yeah that all checks out.  I'm tempted to just do a clean sweep and fresh install.  I didn't have any members yet anyway.  Might be faster with my little knowledge lol

if it didn't have much site content that's just what i would do lol