I am having the same problem and have been trying to post a reply to get some attention on it from PHPBuilder members.
Here is what I've learned:
It only happens when PHP is loaded as a module, the CGI works fine.
As long as you keep requesting the page relatively frequently it (every few seconds) it works fine. Stop for 30 seconds or so and request and it doesn't work anymore.
Knowing this, I set the KeepAlive property in httpd.conf to FALSE to force Apache to kill the child process being used to handle that webpage right away. The page loads once, then doesn't anymore. I assume from this that the act of trying to unload PHP (and consequently the JVM) is failing. When another request comes along the system still finds the resident process and tries to use it. The JVM is corrupt, or can't go through its startup properly at that point.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. I am on Win2K with Apache 1.3.20, PHP 4.1.1, and JDK2SE 1.4-RC.
Tim
thiller@sandvine.com