Works just fine. Verify your network connections or whatever you use to connect to internet. I suppose a simple: file_get_contents("http://127.0.01/"); will work just fine too for you (as long as you have 127.0.0.1 define).

I worked to find a workaround all the last weekend.
the solution was writing this : 

function win64_file_get_contents($url, $timeout=5)
    {
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
    $file_contents = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    if (is_bool($file_contents) && ($file_contents == FALSE))
        {
        return FALSE;
        }
    else
        {
        return $file_contents;
        }
    }


I'm sure you know this code (found on the web).

Do you have a windows 2008 64 test platform ?

Yes, windows is my main platform. Did you allow allow_url_fopen in your php.ini?

But again: It does work. If it does not, then something is wrong in your configuation.

allow_url_include On On 

It is not a network problem because curl based workaround works !

I'm sure it is a windows 64 bits specific problem (2008 server, vista, or seven).

It is not. It works (win7/2k8/2k8R2, x64 or x86). Please ask further support on php-windows or php-general mailing list.

perhaps a French windows 2008 server OS specific issue ?

The bug appears even with the command line interface.