Installing PHP 5.x on Windows Server 2008 isn’t stragight forward just like click NEXT, and FINISH if you are using MSI installer, i need to figured out what’s wrong or what steps i’ve missed ,the problem what i was facing was PHP has been installed correctly BUT MsSQL extensions were not active at all, as you shou;d it in phpinfo page, well off course i can skip this just if customer doesn’t intends to use MsSQL , but infact it’s stated in my Job Order and aslso requested by customer himself, sigh…. , well i hope what i’m sharing here can help you out , i will try to guide you through the step by step, just feel free to add comment if i missed out the steps
-)Make Sure your Windows server 2008 is installed properly with IIS 7 and FastCGIModule ,before you proceed to the next step
-)Download PHP itself, it can be downloaded from php.net , last time i was downloaded and installed “php-5.2.12-nts-win32-installer” MSI installer version , select “FastCGI webserver”
-)Once installed, check and make sure extension directory is points to correct extension folder , when installed the php i was customized it, so it will install php into C:\PHP instead of C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP
-)From “Internet Information Server Manager” you need to add new handler mapping from “Add Module Mapping”
Request path : *.php
Module : FastCGIModule
Executable : c:\php\php-cgi.exe (adjust this if you use another folder)
Name : php (or whatsoever you want)
-)create phpinfo script and put it right inside the root directory of your website and test it out
You will not see any error message while accessing that phpinfo page, but you will not able to see any MsSQL module on it, but if you are lucky you will see it and no use and no points to read the next part after this coma(“,”) ,
but if you accessing that phpinfo page direclty from command line, you will see the error message , saying that “msvcr71.dll is missing” and ask you to reinstall the program, bla bla bla,, msvcr71.dll is one of Microsoft C runtime library and it’s propably bundled with Dot Net Framework 1.1, tried to get that missing file by installing Microsoft C++ 2008 Redistribute , but it wasn’t helps , or i was unlucky at that time? well just download that dll file directly from this URL, and put it inside C:\Windows\SysWOW64 , that’s it, MsSQL will shows up right after that 
Reference:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcr71
