/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php 403 (Forbidden)
<p>I'm running WordPress on Windows server 2012 R2 in an Azure VM.  In one of my sites, the theme options panel is not updating.  When I check the console, I see that this error: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php 403 (Forbidden).</p>

<p>The .htaccess file in the root folder looks like this:</p>

<pre><code># BEGIN WordPress
&lt;IfModule mod_rewrite.c&gt;
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# Forbidding PHP files execution
&lt;FilesMatch “\.(php|php\.)$”&gt;
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
&lt;/FilesMatch&gt;

# END WordPress

#GZIP Compression
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
</code></pre>

<p>I've tried adding another .htaccess file into the wp-admin folder with the following:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;IfModule mod_security.c&gt;
   SecFilterEngine Off
&lt;/IfModule&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>But this does not work.</p>

<p>My permissions for the files are set like this:
<a href="https://www.customfitonline.com/news/2013/6/20/solve-wordpress-on-windows-server-problems/" rel="nofollow">https://www.customfitonline.com/news/2013/6/20/solve-wordpress-on-windows-server-problems/</a></p>

<p>Any ideas on how to get this working???</p>