Most of you know that I am a true computer geek at heart and I get paid to be one also, so it works out for the best. But I faced something today that I had not faced before. So here is some info for you guys that may help you in the future if you face the same issue.

I am a contract web developer for a web design firm. I am currently working on a rather large project and I received a text message from their server administrator that there was an error with PHP and MySQL on the server. I immediately jumped on a tech’s best search tool (www.google.com) and researched and found a little info. I logged onto the server and opened the php.ini file which controls the php settings for the server. I noticed some things. First, the extension_dir command was not pointing to the c:\php\ext location as it should be and I also noticed that extension=php_mysql.dll was commented out. I knew this needed to change. Here is what I did to fix the issue.

1. Navigate down to the php directory and open php.ini in notebook.
2. Make a copy of the php.ini file and name it php.ini_old.
3. Search for extension=php_mysql.dll and un comment (remove the ; from the line).
4. Search for the extension_dir=”./” and replace the ./ with the location of your php installation. If your php installation is on the c:\ then it would be c:\php\ext.
5. Save your php.ini file.
6.Right click and Copy libmysql.dll from your php folder.
7. Navigate to c:\windows\system32. Locate the libmysql.dll and rename it to libmysql.dll_old.
8. Right click and paste the copy of libmysql.dll from your php folder to the system32 folder.
9. Last, you need to restart IIS. To do this, go to start and right click on My Computer then click Manage.
10. Locate Services and Applications in the Manager, then click Services, then locate IIS which stands for Internet Information Services. Double Click on that service then click STOP. You may receive a warning about some other services that are going to be stopped. That is ok, we will restart those services later.
11. Now, we need to restart IIS. So click Start. Once it has restarted, click ok.
12. Now we have to restart the other services. Locate the following and start them as you did IIS: World Wide Web Publishing Service, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, File Transfer Protocol Service, and HTTP Service.
13. You are now working.

Happy browsing and good luck!