For the past couple of days I migrated to Windows Vista Ultimate and I was struggling to set up everuthing like I want to so I can resume work on my project. The installation was smooth, my programs installed correctly, Photoshop CS2 and Notepad++ all work just fine. So when it was time to install Apache2, PHP and MySQL I was wondering if there was going to be a problem with Vistas’ new security features. And there was. Vista will not let the installers to set up Apache as a service.
So after “a few” failed attempts I thought to try to install PHP on IIS7 which is bundled with Vista. A little Googling later and I found two very good blog entries with step by step instructions.
Firstly there is Blond R’s post which walks you through every step of the installation process, including MySQL for both 32 and 64 bit versions. If for any reason something goes wrong and you can’t get things to work check out Can Erten’s post which has some further steps including permission changes and ISAPI and CGI restrictions.
After reading the above posts you should be able to set everything up correctly. So off to work again…
Update: I have managed to install XAMPP under Vista. The User Account Control (UAC) in Vista causes problems with the installation. If you disable UAC the installation is completed successfully and everything works ok. 😉
If you disable UAC, install Apache, install MySQL and then re-enable UAC everything works.
It’s just a problem with Apache’s installer and creating the service, once it’s created all is well.
I believe the problem is with UAC prohibiting the installer(s) to create services under Vista and not the installers fault. That is why you must install Apache and MySQL with UAC disabled, both installers need to create a service. In fact, any Apache, MySQL, PHP bundle (like XAMPP) installs correctly with UAC off and fails with UAC on.
To be honest I believe it is not the Installer but the command line scripts it starting. The installer is run under admin privileges, however the batch files are not. Therefore, the system installs but it is not configured and the services are not available.
This had us stumped – for a while at least. OS – Vista Home. We downloaded the .msi file and installed it. Had problems “Apache2” service not found and port 80 error. Resolved the first problem by ensuring that we opened up the CMD shell as ADMINISTRATOR, the second problem was caused by SKYPE which was holding open port 80. To resolve the second problem we simply reconfigured SKYPE to not use port 80. The apache services then started up fine – this had us going for hours! We hope we save you some time.