Apache on Windows 2000 problem

[DrDoc]

One of my clients is hosting their Web site on a server where PHP is run as a CGI binary. I haven't installed/configured the PHP binary on my machine (Win2k with Apache). So, to avoid renaming the PHP scripts to *.php I threw in an .htaccess in the work folder:

<Files *.cgi>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

That worked great! ...until today. For some reason I get a 500 server error. I haven't changed anything in the files or the .htaccess or otherwise modified any server settings.

However, a script I ran yesterday caused the Apache server to crash. So, I assume the crash has something to do with it.

The error log isn't very helpful. It just says that it doesn't know how to parse the *.cgi file.

I've checked my httpd.conf and php.ini, and they seem ok. Besides, I don't have any problems when I run PHP through the Apache module otherwise. So, I have no clue what's wrong.

If anyone could give me some helpful pointers as to what I should check, it would be very much appreciated.

[DrDoc]

Anyone got a clue, or experienced something similar before?

[DaveAtIFG]

Any time M$ op systems begin misbehaving, restart and chkdsk are the order of the day and if you had a script crash the server, it sounds as if a critical Apache file may have gotten clobbered. If chkdsk doesn't help I'd do the following and test after each step until the problem is resolved:
1. Reinstall Apache
2. If Automatic updates to W2K are enabled, see if M$ installed something that's now causing problems.
3. Run System File Checker
4. Reinstall W2K