I recently needed to upgrade the PHP for a particular site from 5.2.6 to 5.3.0. Of course, this is when I found out that PHP no longer supports the ISAPI module and instead wants you to use FastCGI. Luckily I found a great article on how to configure IIS at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/247/using-fastcgi-to-host-php-applications-on-iis-60/. However, these instructions have some caveats in regards to running IIS in 32 bit mode on Windows Server 2003 x64. To make a long story short, just like with most things running in 32 bit mode on x64, everything that references %WINDIR%\system32 really needs to point to %WINDIR%\SysWOW64. If you use the fcgiconfig.js script, this will configure everything to point to %WINDIR%\system32.
- The Web Service Extension needs to point to %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\inetsrv\fcgiext.dll.
- The .php extension on the website also needs to point to %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\inetsrv\fcgiext.dll.
- The fcgiext.ini file must also be located in %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\inetsrv. Otherwise you will get a 500 error from FastCGI saying it cannot find the configuration file.
Note that the fcgiconfig.js script is only installed in %WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv. I was able to create a fcgiconfigwow64.js file that points to the correct files. The script needs to have at least an ini file with the “[Types]” section in the %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\inetsrv directory. It also needs to be located under %WINDIR%\system32 as it doesn’t support running under Wow64. You just need to change the following 2 lines near the top of the script.
From:
var g_iniPath = g_Shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%WinDir%\\system32\\inetsrv\\fcgiext.ini" );
var g_extensionPath = g_Shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%WinDir%\\system32\\inetsrv\\fcgiext.dll" );
To:
var g_iniPath = g_Shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%WinDir%\\SysWOW64\\inetsrv\\fcgiext.ini" );
var g_extensionPath = g_Shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%WinDir%\\SysWOW64\\inetsrv\\fcgiext.dll" );
