And you're not loading _any_ extensions in your php.ini file? 
I bet the reason is that the PHP 5.3 is trying to load PHP 5.2 extensions.

No feedback was provided for this bug for over a week, so it is
being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the
information that was originally requested, please do so and change
the status of the bug back to "Open".

Hi!
I don't know if it's the right place, but it seems to me, that I have the same problem/effect... 

I'm using Xampp as basic-installation.

Including PHP6 works pretty fine with the windows-binaries from snaps.php.net.
Including 5.3 instead of 5.2 the apache crashes...

Having the same issue:

Current config works fine:
Apache 2.2.6
PHP 5.2.6

If I change it to use PHP 5.3

httpd.conf
PHPIniDir "C:/php53/"
LoadModule php5_module "C:/php53/php5apache2_2.dll"

using php.ini-recommended (renamed as php.ini)

When it tries to re-start I'm getting:
Faulting application httpd.exe, version 2.2.9.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00730951.

Please try using this CVS snapshot:

  http://snaps.php.net/php5.3-latest.tar.gz
 
For Windows:

  http://windows.php.net/snapshots/

No feedback was provided for this bug for over a week, so it is
being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the
information that was originally requested, please do so and change
the status of the bug back to "Open".

I am experiencing a very similar problem with PHP 5.3.0 on my 32-bit 
Windows XP Home SP3 environment with Apache 2.2.13 (the same problem 
was occurring with Apache 2.2.11).

At present I have three version of PHP installed:
- 5.2.8 in C:\Program Files\PHP\5.2.8
- 5.2.10 in C:\Program Files\PHP\5.2.10
- 5.3.0 in C:\Program Files\PHP\5.3.0

I am running PHP through the php5apache2_2.dll module with the 
following lines in my httpd.conf file:

LoadModule php5_module "C:/Program Files/PHP/5.x.x/php5apache2_2.dll"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
PHPIniDir "C:/Program Files/PHP/5.x.x"

If I replace '5.x.x' above with '5.2.8' or '5.2.10', I am able to 
restart Apache successfully (almost instantly) and my PHP scripts run 
fine.

However, if I replace '5.x.x' with '5.3.0' and try to restart Apache, 
nothing happens for a few seconds and then the following message 
appears:

- Apache HTTP Server has encountered a problem and needs to close...
  szAppName: httpd.exe
  szAppVer: 2.2.13.0
  szModName: unknown
  szModVer: 0.0.0.0
  offset: (varies, eg. 007510e9, 00788691, ...)

An entry is also written to the Windows System log:

  The Apache2.2 service terminated with service-specific error 1 
(0x1).

For the purposes of all these tests I used vanilla versions of the 
Apache and PHP configuration files (except for the lines in httpd.conf 
shown above). I have also tried an automated install of PHP 5.3 (php-
5.3.0-Win32-VC6-x86.msi) but this results in exactly the same 
behaviour.

The build of PHP 5.3.0 that I am using is 'VC6 x86 Thread Safe (2009-
Jun-30 08:52:55)' from http://windows.php.net/download/. I installed 
Apache using the official Win32 MSI (no SSL) at 
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi

If you require any further information, or would like me to do any 
further tests, please let me know!

Please do not post comments here to get installation support.

Reading them give me the feeling that there are no crash but a DLL mess. Clean your install, test one single version at a time and be sure to use the right version of PHP 5.3 (see the notices on the windows.php.net download page).

Is that supposed to be some sort of "assistance?" I am having the exact same 
problem. My install is clean--there is only one version of PHP installed--5.3.6, 
the VC6 x86 Thread Safe version. Any more "feelings" on the matter?