Installing wordpress on Windows 2003 IIS 6.0: “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.” (Part 1 of 3)

So, if you’ve setup wordpress on your own server you’ve probably seen this

“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL”

Terrible. really terrible.

So, this is what I’ve done several times to make it work, and it does appear to work.

Environment
Server 2003, IIS, PHP 5+, wordpress some version (1.5 + i think)

This assumes your php is up and running , do a phpinfo to ensure it is.
steps:

1. add php to your path
2. ensure that “extension=mysql.so” and “extension=mysqli.so” are uncommented in your php.ini
3. ensure both of those files actually are in your php /ext directory
4. ensure the ‘ext_dir‘ path is set to the full directory path to php/ext in your php.ini eg:"c:phpext"
5. ensure the iis user (internet guest account and iis_wpg) have read priveleges to your php directory
6. add an environment variable “PHPRC” with the value of your php directory , this is key
—update—
EVeryone feels a reboot is required, I expect restarting the www service would do the trick as well
6.5 restart the www service
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7. shazaam.