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Installing Apache on Vista
Grrrrrr.....

20 July 2007

by Huw Collingbourne

I’ve been putting this off for a long time. And with good cause! I administer a number of database-driven Web applications such as the Bitwise site itself and the site of my software company (both of which use the excellent SPIP CMS) plus a few other applications to manage newsletters and the like. Each of these requires an installation of MySQL, PHP and an Apache server. While these are all pre-installed on the online server, my local copies - used for development on my PC - have to be installed be me...

Up to now, my local installation has run on Windows XP. But I am gradually moving everything across to a new PC running Vista. I always suspected this would cause me problems. And I was right.

The good news is that the installation of MySQL was trouble-free. The bad new is that the installation of Apache just didn’t work. I haven’t yet got around to trying to install PHP (I need a rest after battling against Apache), but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be reasonably painless...

I’ve installed Apache several times in the past and I even wrote a tutorial on how to do it. But Vista proved bothersome. In the end, I gave up trying to figure out how to get Apache working on Vista and resorted, instead, to some creative Googling. Luckily, this turned up exactly what I needed - a first rate guide to installing Apache on Vista on the Molecular Sieve Blog which, curiously enough, is largely about chemistry rather than Apache. If you have problems with Apache and Vista, I recommend that you follow the Molecular Sieve instructions to the letter. The only slight variation I made was to set the ‘Monitor Apache Server’ compatibility properties to ‘Windows XP Service Pack 2’ (as suggested in one of the comments) rather than delete the item as suggested in the Blog entry itself.

Over the couple of months in which I’ve been using Vista, I have had mixed feelings about the OS. On the one hand, it definitely looks nicer than XP (though not as nice as OS X) and I am glad that Microsoft has started addressing security issues more seriously. On the other hand, I’m not sure that the way in which it has addressed those security issues is the most civilized way conceivable. Its insistence on popping up warnings every time I try to run a perfectly legitimate program is annoying more than useful. It’s so annoying, indeed, that I am sorely tempted to disable it (via the User Account Control entry in the Control Panel). These warnings feel like nagging rather than real security checking (if I do happen accidentally to run a malicious program, I kind of expect another message to pop up saying “Well, we did warn you...”). The ZoneAlarm anti-virus software pops up similar warnings even on XP - which is one of the main reasons I uninstalled it and went back to using the less intrusive Sophos antivirus.

Anyway, I now have MySQL and Apache running. Time to get started on PHP, I guess. Wish me luck...