I have solved my problem so for the benefit of all those people who were considering replying but didnt quite get aroudn to it:
The headers Apache sent were silly. The Server: header told me I was running PHP 2.1.0 and the X-Powred-By header said PHP 4.1.0.
Anywhos to cut a long story short, I just deleted my entire PHP dir and unzipped it again. This is Windows 2000/Apache 1.3.24. As Apache runs the php4apache.dll out of that folder, there must have been a mix up. Anyway, it works now. Thanks.