I'm going insane here, so with what little time I have left before finally losing my mind I'm going to post here, pleading for help.

Here's the thing; I don't know how many of you are familiar with Sunshop, it's basically an install of OSCommerce with bells on. It requires PHP and MySQL and I'm trying to get these running on my local machine. It's an XP SP2 machine.

I've downloaded PHP, oh, maybe 25 times now. Each time thinking maybe I got the wrong install package the last time. I've narrowed it down to one package:

php-5.2.3-Win32.zip

Which comes with extensions but requires manual installation. I'm fairly handy with windows so I thought it would be no bother. I was wrong.

I've added the PHP.exe in IIS, set up the PHP.ini file in the windows directory, set up the PATH to point to the extensions directory, and even thrown the mysql.dll into both system and system32 directories out of desperation. Nothing works.

Well, that's not strictly true, various elements DO work, but I just cannot get the whole thing to work seamlessly.

So at the moment I've got IIS set up to run PHP but whenever I test using local host it won't display my test PHP page. It thinks about it for quite a while, then eventually says there's no page to display.

I've followed PHP.net's new guide on installing in windows....and it confused me into bouts of furious anger. I've followed various tutorials online and still I cannot get this to work.

Can anyone out there either explain or point me to a clear, cleanly laid out tutorial on how to get PHP running in Windows XP SP2?

Please! Before I take up ASP.net!

    I would recommend using xampp (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html). You download the installer (.exe) and it will install Apache, PHP and MySql to your windows machine. This is by far the easiest way i have found to install if you are having issues installing manually.

      Another Apache/PHP/MySQL all-in-one installation option is WAMP.

        However, scaryjones appears to want to use IIS, so XAMPP and WAMP will not cut it. I suggest following bradgrafelman's instructions and see if it works out. If not, ask for help in the Install forum.

        If you do want to switch to Apache instead of IIS, I posit that XAMPP and WAMP are not necessary - one can install Apache (and MySQL) using the installers, and then following the PHP manual's instructions on integration with PHP is a beeze.

          tron00 wrote:

          I would recommend using xampp (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html). You download the installer (.exe) and it will install Apache, PHP and MySql to your windows machine. This is by far the easiest way i have found to install if you are having issues installing manually.

          Thanks for all replies. Apache was something I'd never considered, I was really just interested in getting Sunshop up and running locally so I could style it.

          Have to say, XAMPP is an absolute life saver, I installed it and after a bit of messing around with IonCube, everything worked perfectly. A brilliant solution and hugely appreciated after so much pain with the various individual installs.

          So, thanks for all the suggestions, XAMPP get my vote!

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