you'll have to grab the source code for the ElggRewriteTester class and find the method inside there -- which triggers the rewrite testing, most likely a protected function to run the tests and in there handle the status(es) appropriately to 'turn it off' ;-) that's all there is to it - it's really quite easy kid-stuff once you get to the class / method source code.. lolz ;-P

Why would it need to be turned off?

onny gawd knowz why duh 1/2 gweeks wanna do dat..! but there's duh answah! seek (~grep) and ye shall find.

@Stumpy  In case you really have a reason to turn this off, you need to do the following simple modification in <your Elgg website>/install/ElggRewriteTester.php:

protected function runRewriteTest($url) {

        $this->serverSupportsRemoteRead = TRUE;

        if (function_exists('curl_init')) {
            // try curl if installed
            $ch = curl_init();
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
            $response = curl_exec($ch);
            curl_close($ch);
            //return $response === 'success';
            return TRUE;

        } else if (ini_get('allow_url_fopen')) {
            // use file_get_contents as fallback
            $response = file_get_contents($url);
            return $response === 'success';
        } else {
            $this->serverSupportsRemoteRead = FALSE;
            return FALSE;
        }
    }

You shouldn't turn off the rewrite test. It's there for a reason. If you think there is a bug in it, please provide details.

@cash & DhrupDeScoop & Matt Beckett thanks for the replies...

My host runs Ubuntu server and they won't edit the conf file for secirity reasons. I can't remember the exact file but I did it on my own ubuntu server and it installed fine once I edited it (AllowOverride to All????) well they wouldn't do it and i did it on my own machine and viola! Soooooo....  I had no choice but to do it that way - when I hit 'test' I got "success" so all is well

ps sorry for the REALLy late reply and thanks for the help all

regards