PHP on IIS 5.1 is not working

Question

I know this has been asked a few times here. But none of the suggestions or answers related to PHP on IIS have helped.

I have tried installing PHP ON IIS 5.1 (XP SP 3) on two computers and it still doesn't work. I've even began to think that all of the articles and installers for PHP on IIS are a huge prank...and that PHP on IIS doesn't actually work.

I've spent the last 6 hours trying to get it to work. Nothing does. As of right now when I navigate to http://localhost/phpinfo.php all that shows up is: "The specified module could not be found." My IIS applications still work perfectly.

phpinfo.php contains:

<?php echo phpinfo(); ?>

Even loading test.php with "Hello World." in it gives me the same error message.

The current installation of PHP was installed from http://php.iis.net/ (the big blue button in the middle of the page). This installed PHP in my pograms directory (F:\PHP).

That didn't configure PHP to work so I manually added the Application Mapping in "Web Sites" > Properties > Home Directory > Configuration > Mappings > Add. I added C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\fcgiext.dll, ext .php, "GET,HEAD,POST"

Anyone have any idea what my problem is?

Answer 1

I think the DLL you are using for getting PHP to work have a missing dependency. Why don't you get a WAMP.

Do you really need to use IIS, using Apache would be far more easy IMHO. If you really want to use IIS, I advise to install the official PHP release they have a good README which describe all the steps to configure IIS or even an installer.

Answer 2

Sounds like you've not installed the FastCGI components (which to be honest you don't really need on your local development machine). Can I suggest mapping the .php extension to:

F:\php\php-cgi.exe (or wherever the PHP binaries are installed)

Also make sure you give your site's anonymous user account at least read access to the F:\PHP folder and children.