The next Vista step was to get my development web server running again. So far so good … with thanks to Molecular Sieve’s article on PHP plus the well spotted correction from David Powers who pointed out that the slashes needed to be forward slashes when. Molecular Sieve’s article on apache was also helpful.
Note that in Molecular Sieve’s article the LoadModule section should be:
LoadModule php5_module "C:/php/php5apache2_2.dll" AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AcceptPathInfo on PHPIniDir "C:/php"
Without this change, it appeared that the Apache server did not work after installing PHP.
In addition, do not enable any php extensions (in php.ini) without them actually being there - eg: do not enable mysql without installing mysql!
Mysql installation was a breeze - I used the windows installer package, switched UAC off, disabled the network, switched off the firewall and anti-virus. As they say in Australia, no worries mate!
But then oh boy - trying to get php to know about mysql…..
So we had mysql running as a service. I could logon via command line etc.
Apache was running, php works (tested via phpinfo), but when installing phpmyadmin I encountered the message “mysql not loaded” and then the fun started. I checked the PATH in environment variables, I checked extension directories and document roots, and restarted and rebooted. Then I happened to see somewhere and here that “extension=php_mbstring.dll” must be enable before “extension=php_exif.dll”. I remembered something like this from my last installation a few years back on XP, so moved mbstring up in the list and voila - php now knows about mysql!