Hello all! Its SOOO nice to find some help for problems with beginning PHP! Thanks again for everyone's input and thoughts. You all are great!

My question is similar to other posts here, but searching through them I was unable to find a situation EXACTLY similar to mine. So I'm sorry for making a new thread but I guess each situation is kind of specific.

I have recently bought Meloni's book on beginning PHP5/Apache2.2/mySQL5 (2007)and installed these from the CD (after unsuccessfully trying to do this on my own from the web). I am running these on Windows XP (that apparently does not have MSII on it). I also have Dreamweaver CS3 installed.

Everything was going well, with everything installed, after some initial config issues, running http://localhost finally brought up the Apache test page. The problem is with viewing the php files. First of all, when I write these and save them with .php (either in notepad or dreamweaver) they tend to save as dreamweaver files and open up in dreamweaver (I don't know if this is an issue or not). However, when I try to just open them with IE or Netscape they don't load (and in IE usually cause an error to be generated that closes IE and asks if I want to send a report to MS). Dreamweaver's preview page function also causes similar problems and won't load the page. I have been reading other posts and so I turned off my firewalls (which didn't help), I uninstalled dreamweaver (and now the php files open up in the browser with "file not found"), and I'm generally getting frustrated.

I did do the config instructions in httpd: config Apache file to the letter as the book instructed me but I'm noticing that these differ from some of the instructions I've found on this board (for instance it didn't include lines about php3 etc, my root file is htdocs in the Apache folder etc). Again, I'm not sure if this might be the issue.

There is one other thing, I once stopped Apache and tried to restart it but it kept coming up with an error box, so I just reinstalled it (so now there are 2 Apache's on my hard drive) - one running and one stopped (I did update both config files just cause I wasn't sure which was which) - but Apache does seem to be working anyway.

I would greatly appreciate any advice you could offer. Even if this was just to point me in the direction of WHERE the problem lies (is it php? mySQL? Apache? Config issues? IE? Dreamweaver?)

Thanks!

Okay, update, Apache is working (it says the server is running), and now I am able to get the phpinfo.php page to display. It looks like this:
__________________________________________________ __________________
System Windows NT xxxxxxxxxxxx(my name) 5.1 build 2600
Build Date May 31 2007 09:36:39
Configure Command cscript /nologo configure.js "--enable-snapshot-build" "--with-gd=shared"
Server API Apache 2.0 Handler
Virtual Directory Support enabled
Configuration File (php.ini) Path C:\WINDOWS
Loaded Configuration File (none)
PHP API 20041225
PHP Extension 20060613
Zend Extension 220060519
Debug Build no
Thread Safety enabled
Zend Memory Manager enabled
IPv6 Support enabled
Registered PHP Streams php, file, data, http, ftp, compress.zlib
Registered Stream Socket Transports tcp, udp
Registered Stream Filters convert.iconv.*, string.rot13, string.toupper, string.tolower, string.strip_tags, convert.*, consumed, zlib.*
__________________________________________________ __________________

Unfortunately it only displays this for a brief amount of time before it goes to the error "Apache HTTP Server has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

When I click on details for this error I get:
szAppName : Apache.exe szAppVer : 2.0.58.200
szModName : php5ts.dll szModVer : 5.2.3.3 offset : 00099ec5

The IE page also then switches and displays "This page cannot be displayed" and on the bottom is states "Cannot find server - Microsoft Internet Explorer".

One other thing, is that after I got php up and running, I can no longer get the general Apache page to load up by typing in http://localhost.

Can anyone help me with this problem. I'm now going in to my second week trying to get this up and going, and I'm persistent and determined, but getting a little frustrated!

Thanks to anyone out there who responds.