I installed php as a module on apache2 folllowing the standard set up.

I have a user logon screen which works on a remote server but not when developing and testing on a stand alone machine that is a local server. 
I hold the username and passwords on mysql and ask the user for their username and password which gets sent to another .php page which first of all sets the following cookies 

setcookie("email",$email,time()+1800); 
setcookie ("password",$password,time()+1800); 

Then verifies this against the database and if succesfull redirects to the 'members area' where the cookies are set again otherwise it redirects to a logout page. [Which is where i get sent on the local machine] 

I have tried the following formats for the setcookie and all combinations including setting the expiry time to 8000. 

setcookie("email",$_POST["email"],time()+1800); 
setcookie ("password",$_POST["password"],time()+1800); 

setcookie("email",$email,"time()+1800"); 
setcookie ("password",$password,"time()+1800"); 

The database authentication is being succeful, it is just that the cookies are not being set on the local machine, as when I hit the members area I set the email value to another variable, set the cooies as before, then alert() the old value [before the $email was reset by the new setcookie() command. 

I have the following lines set in my php.ini 

register_globals = On 
variables_order = "EGPCS" 

Do you have any idea why my local machine is not setting the cookies??? 

Please help