Installing PHP under Windows

Installing PHP is supposed to be easy under Windows using the installer.

First you need to install Apache, or other web server.
Then launch the php windows installer and follow the instructions.

What I installed was Apache 2.2.4 and I tried to install PHP 5.2.2.
Everything was fine until I wanted to use some extension functions, like pg_connect, which is the function to connect to a PostgreSQL server. It didn't work and I was very surprised, because when I installed PHP I specified that I wanted to install the PostgreSQL extension.

I checked the php.ini file and the extension was indeed activated. I checked if the dll exists, it was there. So what was the problem? I figured out that php.ini was not being parsed, so I had to check the httpd.conf file for Apache where you need to specify the path for the php file.

I noticed that the PHP installer was writing the httpd.conf file wrongly, giving the path in forward slash notation, but everywhere else in the file all the paths were given in back slash notation, so I changed the path notation for php specifying the correct path both to the php.ini file and to the php5 module that Apache needs to load.

I restarted Apache and I got even more confused, the server couldn't recognise the php files as scripts and it displayed the code as text. That happens usually when the php module fails to load, so I changed the path only for the php5 module back to the way it was, no improvement. Then I changed the PHPIniDir attribute to the way it was before and it worked again, but I was back to no php.ini parsing. I changed only the PHPIniDir attribute to the backslash notation and I got the same result as earlier: code displayed as text.

I thought maybe the php.ini has a problem, but going through all of didn't reveal any mistake. I decided to rename it for a while to see what happens. Well, surprise, surprise, PHP worked, but no extensions...

My conclusion: writing the paths in backslash notations is the right thing to do, but if the server parses the php.ini file, it fails to load the php module.

php.ini looks good, everything is fine, the doc_root (that the installer failed to write) is there written correctly. I also followed the instructions to install php manually and I did everything accordingly, no improvement.

Is PHP meant to be used on Windows with Apache?

UPDATE: I solved my problem by installing XAMPP. Thank you very much Jo Cook for the tip.