Ok, I have had it with IIS... Time to install Apache!

I was reluctant to install Apache because I always thought that it would be too hard.  Lot's of fiddly things to install, mucking about with a bunch of text files... the list went on and on, but as it turns out, I was wrong.  Just go to http://httpd.apache.org/  grab apache_2.2.10-win32-x86-openssl-0.9.8i.msi (at the time of this writing) and run the msi file.  The only change I made was to install everything and point the installer to something like x:\apache  (x being any drive you choose) for easy webroot access. 

This install will do everything! Unlike the PHP installer Apache will work as soon as the installer is finished.  Now the fiddly part that I was afraid of: Getting PHP and MySQL to play nice with it...
Add these three lines to your httpd.conf:

LoadModule php5_module "x:/php5/php5apache2_2.dll"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Do a search for DirectoryIndex and make it look like this: DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

That's it! You are done.

Ohh almost forgot if you have set anything to the Inetpub\wwwroot folder in the php.ini file (like upload_tmp_dir or session.save_path), you will need to change it to reflect your new webroot folder:x:\Apache\htdocs

Posted by email from Musings, Ramblings and Other Assorted Rubbish (posterous)