New to PHP, can't get it to work

Hving trouble running PHP4 on Windows XP IIS 5.1

[dougmcc1]

When I try to run a PHP file on my computer, I get an error which says:

"The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers. The headers it did return are:"

and it doesn't list any headers. I downloaded PHP 4.3.1 [php.net] from [php.net ] and it installed successfully. I do have a firewall but disabling it doesn't make any difference. I also turned off IIS during the install process, restarted my computer after the install was completed, turned on IIS again and I still get the same error when I try to run the PHP file.

I'm guessing this is an obvious error to PHP experts, but I'm so new at this that I don't know where to go from here. I searched for information on the web, and within this website and I can't find anything that helps me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[eaden]

I can't help you with IIS, but if you just want to run php scripts try PHPTriad :
[sourceforge.net...]
( PHP + Apache + mysql for Windows minus hassels )

[dougmcc1]

Thanks eaden, I'll give that a try.

Still open for suggestions on my original problem as well, if anyone has a solution.

[grifter]

I run apache on both linux and win32, but I went to groups.google.com and entered the query:

php "The specified CGI application misbehaved"

And got a whole slew of suggestions in just a couple of minutes.

Groups is a goldmine when you have an error string to paste in. =)

[grifter]

Oh, and try sorting the results by date.

[dougmcc1]

grifter, thank you for your post.

Actually I used a lot of different exact search phrases in Google but after skimming through some of the results I didn't find them very useful. Even your search phrase in Google didn't return any helpful information to me, as you'll notice if you click through to some of those pages (I went through the top 20).

I have searched and searched on the net for answers which is why I resorted to WW. I am hoping there's someone else more familiar with PHP who can address my problem more directly. Thanks again though.

[grifter]

No problem. Darn, I've never failed to win someone over with the Groups + error message string tactic. ;)

Providing your Windows version here along with the IIS version might expedite an answer.

Godspeed.

[DrDoc]

Did you go through the steps in install.txt, the section about IIS?

Do you have a php.ini?

[bigM_sh]

I don't know if you tried this already, but to check if the problem really is the in the interpreter and not maybe in the PHP page itself did you try to run a very simple PHP page?
something like:

<?php phpinfo()?>

[dougmcc1]

>>Darn, I've never failed to win someone over with the Groups + error message string tactic. ;)

Oh I agree it's an excellent strategy for finding solutions to error messages, but this error message is so vague that it's hard to find an answer that is directly related to my problem. Usually there are headers after "the headers it did return are"... but not in my case.

>>Providing your Windows version here along with the IIS version might expedite an answer.

Yeah I don't believe I tried that. I will give that a shot.

>>Did you go through the steps in install.txt, the section about IIS?

The installer file didn't come with an install.txt. It was just one setup file which installed PHP. All I had to do was choose what directories to install it to and check a radio button for "IIS 4.0 or higher" during the install anyways, so it wasn't very complicated.

>>Do you have a php.ini?

Yes I do.

>>did you try to run a very simple PHP page

Yes, I tried running a php page that had the beginning and ending HTML and BODY tags and a simple print command in the body area. There were 2 other pages that I tried as well. All of them get the same error.

eaden has pointed me to this page [php.net ] which might be just what I need. Let me try that. I will also try putting the error message into Google along with my Windows and IIS version this time.

Thanks