Description:
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I originally wrote this for beginner's who were having issues so bare with me.
I've figured out what the problem is with installing php-5.2.3 and mysql 5.0.16 on windows xp. with apache 2.0 I really don't know what's happening, I'll leave that up to you. 

Anyways there seems to be a conflict going on, a "you can have one thing but not the other scenario" When php5 windows binary installer runs it creates your php.ini file, with all sorts of configuration data. One very important line is extension_dir it looks something like this extension_dir "C:\php\ext\" This directive tells php where it's extension files are stored, in order to use mysql, you need to have selected the extension mysql at the time of install, it copies the file php_mysql.dll into the "C:\php\ext\" folder. 

You are also asked at the time of install, the path to your apache config folder, it then writes some directives in the file httpd.conf, it looks like this 

PHPIniDir "C:\\PHP5\\"
LoadModule php5_module "C:\\PHP5\\php5apache2.dll"

Now you may think that this looks all great, and you should have php running along side mysql. Wrong! I can tell you how to get your mysql working fine. Simply change the two forward slashes to one backwards slash.

PHPIniDir "C:/PHP5/"
LoadModule php5_module "C:/PHP5/php5apache2.dll"

Restart your server and you'll be able to connect to your database.

Herein lies the double edged sword. Now you've lost much php functionality, including error reporting.