Here is the behavior:
Start server.
Open up html page. Good. Flash. Good. Open up a php page, the w3svc service will silently, and efficiently, shut down. Eventually, I discovered that, if I commented the line
;extension=php_gd.dll
everything would be fine. If I uncomment it, it will again shut down as soon as I open a php page.
Is this a documented bug, or a buggy dll? In any case, what can I do to fix this?