Created attachment 132178 [details] patch to fix this bug
The attached patch puts <IfModule> directives around the config file directives that match every module that you might want to disable. This means that to disable modules you merely have to comment the LoadModule directives, not hunt through the entire httpd.conf commenting things out all the way. This is really handy when building a system to meet security standards documents specifying that all unnecessary software be disabled or removed.
Thanks for the suggestion and patch. It is generally not desirable to over-use <IfModule in the default configuration: if should be clear that if you disable modules then use of the corresponding directives should cause a configuration error. Otherwise, it becomes a "silent failure" if people accidentally comment out a certain module, which can be confusing and hard to diagnose.