ok lets see... first i installed the installer version, but realized that it wasn't what i needed. so i then downloaded and extracted the binary version on top.
added the necessary lines to httpd.conf:
ScriptAlias /php/ "c:/Program Files/PHP/"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
For PHP 4
LoadModule php4_module "C:/Program Files/PHP/php4apache.dll"
specify the directory where php.ini is
SetEnv PHPRC C:/windows/
then put the php.ini file into my windows directory -but didn't alter it. also moved all the files in the "dlls" and "sapi" folders into the main php dir.
as a result apache worked fine, however the sample php page i wrote didn't show anything. what happened was that the apache sever did its job when i typed the address (http://localhost....), but there was nothing on the page (in my code i had used an echo command, but when executed in browser nothing was on the page).
thnx