index.php redirect

I seem to have a strange problem. I recently changed hosting accounts to IX web hosting. I installed the latest version of wordpress no problem. Howerver – on my past host I could install the wordpress in the root directory and still keep the index.html of the old site. As I worked on the new wordpress template I could simply check it by typing my site.com/index.php and my browser would go to the new site – however this time when I type in my site.com/index.php it automatically redirects to my site.com/index.html

I have checked with three support tewchs and they each say it is the wordpress installation – something inside the software is redirecting. I didn’t have this problem before but maybe something got changes ? can anyone help? thanks