Forum Moderators: phranque
I had never had this problem in the past 3+ years I've been using Apache, and installed 2.0.53 on a fresh reformat with XP Pro SP2 w/ all updates on March 7 and left the box unattended, rebooting only 3 times that I can remember. I couldn't figure it out and tried reinstalling countless times.
I searched google and found a few forums with threads where the topic was my same issue. I found it very hard to believe that anything mentioned was the cause of my problem, because I had done NOTHING different to my webserver machine, and hadn't in nearly 2 years once I decided exactly how I wanted things.
I checked netstat countless times, and as I expected, found nothing out of the ordinary. This is a dedicated Apache webserver and I've always uninstalled IIS and never allowed it to run. I tried manually installing the service many different times, in a couple different ways and had no success. I checked the installation logs each time I tried installing 2.0.54 AND trying to reinstall 2.0.53 and didn't see any documented reasons for service installation failure. Nothing in the system event log pointed to Apache's failure to install the service either. PERPLEXING!
I then got the idea that a Microsoft critical/security update was the culprit. I saw that only 5 had been installed since the time when I originally installed 2.0.53 on March 7 (KB893086, KB893066, KB890923, KB893803, KB890859). I checked out the specifics for each one and decided that only two could possibly be causing the problem--the updated MSI installer and one other (I forgot). I uninstalled both--no success in installing apache service. I then uninstalled the remaining 3 updates that had been installed since my initial Apache installation--no success.
I tried tons of other things I found off google (I can't remember them all because it's been over 2 hours of attempts) and nothing did the trick.
OK, here's the good part. I kept messing around trying to at least get 2.0.53 to reinstall and saw the error window for php4apache2.dll not being able to load (as I had many times before, but disregarded). I then remembered all my Apache installation logs noted that an httpd.conf was present (not being removed from uninstallation--gladly, because I wanted to retain my settings as I had in MANY updates in the past). I got the "brilliant" idea to move the httpd.conf file to a different location and then delete the apache folder after uninstalling. I reinstalled and BAM, worked perfectly!
I threw my saved httpd.conf back in, restarted the service and everything worked properly. I have concluded that my httpd.conf left behind from uninstalling the previous version (even though it never did harm in the past), with --LoadModule php4_module "c:/php/sapi/php4apache2.dll"-- was causing a problem somehow. I suspect that apache.exe was trying to run before starting the service, but (for some VERY odd reason) could not load php4apache2.dll, even though nothing had changed.
SO, to recap, my solution was to pull httpd.conf from C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\conf and delete the apache folder. Then install Apache 2.0.54, replace the httpd.conf after successful installation, copy php4apache2.dll and php4ts.dll back to C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2, and then restart the apache service. SUCCESS!
Hope that incredibly simple, overlooked solution can help somebody :)
