I have Beginners PHP4, it has the server to download for 95,98,2000 and NT, can i use this book on XP or do i use the NT server?

Great
 "GOOD NEWS".
U don't need any other server or OS to run PHP. I assume that if you are using win-XP, IIS is already installed in it. If so, then just creat a .php file in "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\".
 Then browse that page from IIS browser.

     Another imp. thing is that u have to download latest version of PHP from the site "www.php.net"
Download PHP download which is compatible with ur OS. Then Execute the setup.exe.
This makes a "PHP" folder at c:\. this confirm that your sys is compatible with php.
Thats it.

If you feel good/bad/still confuse, reply me back.

Njoy Programming
Sharad Saxena

Regards,
Sharad

Well, if you are using Windows XP Home Edition, IIS will not be installed on it, and what's more Microsoft have designed the operating system in an attempt to prevent you installing it. This is not to say it can't be done (see here for instructions from one hardy user who beat their system into submission and got IIS running on XP Home Edition http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...8663173%40news).

That said, this is probably a lot of fuss to go to, simply in order to run a crap web server on an operating system the manufacturers have made every effort to make incompatible with it.

So your best bet is to download and run the Apache installer from Apache.org (http://apache.mirrors.rossfell.co.uk...x86-no_src.exe). The PHP self-ectractor should then be downloaded and installed from PHP.net (http://uk.php.net/get/php-4.3.8-inst.../from/a/mirror).

HTH
Dan