Assigning to myself; it would be good if some other people could verify if this problem exists on other platforms, and if this is a critical issue.

No example script here either. Can not reproduce.

Repro script is below. i tested w/ w2k+FastCGI and w2k+isapi, and could repro the behaviour w/ both.

steps:
1. run the script
2. take host down and back up, or even just cycle the listening app on the specified port. either one will repro the bug.
3. run the script again. if you're using isapi or fastcgi, it'll attempt to reuse the connection, but won't reconnect, and will display the behaviour described.

<?php

$host = 'd-w2kserv';
$port = 80;

// open connection
if(!$fp = pfsockopen($host, $port, $errno, $error_str)){
	die('error: '.$error_str.$phperrormsg);
} else {

	// write data
	$requestMsg = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: $host\r\n\r\n";
	if(!@fwrite($fp, $requestMsg)) {
		die('error: '.$phperrormsg);
	}
	
	// read data
	do {
		
		// array of connections
		$read = array($fp);
		
		// use stream_select() for non-busy wait
		if (false === ($num_changed_streams = stream_select($read, $write = NULL, $except = NULL, 0))) {
		   
		   die('Stream_select returned error: '.$phperrormsg);
			
		// At least on one of the streams something interesting happened 
		} elseif ($num_changed_streams > 0) {
			
			if( !$data = @fgets($fp, 8192) ){
				
				die('couldnt get data from socket, or socket returned no data');
				
			}
			print $data;
			
			// no more data
			if (feof($fp) || $data === false || strlen($data) == 0) {
				break;
			}

		}
		
	} while(true);
}
?>

Please try using this CVS snapshot:

  http://snaps.php.net/php4-STABLE-latest.tar.gz
 
For Windows:
 
  http://snaps.php.net/win32/php4-win32-STABLE-latest.zip

This bug has been fixed in CVS.

In case this was a PHP problem, snapshots of the sources are packaged
every three hours; this change will be in the next snapshot. You can
grab the snapshot at http://snaps.php.net/.
 
In case this was a documentation problem, the fix will show up soon at
http://www.php.net/manual/.

In case this was a PHP.net website problem, the change will show
up on the PHP.net site and on the mirror sites in short time.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.

User reports that the problem was in fact fixed in the CVS.