Google analytics: Google can’t verify site

Cannot get google analytics (web optimization tools) to verify my site. They advise to either upload an html file with a specific name or to insert a meta tag into the header or home page.

I’ve done both. I see the html file uploaded but google isn’t able to verify. I’ve tried pasting the meta tag into into the header and index.php. Still can’t verify.

The error I’m getting is: We’ve detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (Success) in the header.

I’ve searched their literature and just keep getting the answer that the page should come up as an error 404 – but no info on what to do about this.

Can anyone please help?