If you’re like me and get the urge to mess around with your PC then this might interest you or if you’re seriously looking to setup an IIS Server along with MySQL & phpMyAdmin then again, this is for you. This is a quick how-to for setting up MySQL & phpMyAdmin on Windows if you’re planning to install Wordpress or any such application dependent on these technologies. There are other options like Xampp but I’d like to talk about how one can set these components individually. Setting up an IIS Server is quite easy & so is MySQL & phpMyAdmin, so here’s how:
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Setting up IIS (Windows 7):
To do this follow these steps:
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Start –> Control Panel
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Programs –> Uninstall a program
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Turn Windows features on or off (left sidebar)
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Check ‘Internet Information Services’ & ‘Internet Information Services Hostable Web Core’.
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OK. Sreenshot:
Once the installation is done, you’ll have to start the server. To do this:
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Start
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Search for IIS –> Select IIS Manager
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Select your PC from the left sidebar & hit ‘Start’ on the right sidebar. Screenshot:
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Install MySQL:
Now that IIS is installed, we’ll set up MySQL, to do that:
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Run the setup
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Select the ‘Typical’ setup & keep hitting Next & Install.
Screenshots:
Once MySQL wizard completes it will ask you whether you want to register the server & if you want to configure the server. To save time & hassle, we’ll uncheck the registration option & will configure the server, screenshots:
We’ll choose the Standard configuration & enter the required details. Configurations screenshots:
Security settings, I’d suggest keep something that you’ll remember & nothing to complicated. Set the MySQL service to auto run saving you time. Screenshots:
Last screen, press ‘Execute’ & once done, ‘Finish’. You’re done with MySQL installation & setup. 
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Installing phpMyAdmin:
We’ll be installing phpMyAdmin as it’s a GUI to managing the tables:
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Extract it to:C:\inetpub\wwwroot\phpmyadmin
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Now navigate to the same directory & rename the file config.sample.inc.php to config.inc.php
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Open the file in Notepad & find$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ‘ ’;
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Within the ‘ ’ insert any word, eg: manan. The line should look like:$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ‘manan’;
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Save the file. Note that the file name should be config.inc.php
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In your browser, go to:localhost/phpmyadmin
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And that’s it, login with the credentials you provided during the MySQL. If all’s done right & the php God’s are smiling you should see your login page, something like this:
~Enjoy!
Wait for the follow up post that would explain my reasoning for going through all of this
July 26th, 2009 at 7:33 am
After doing lots of practices to Install, PHP & MySQL on Windows XP. I am now on WampServer.
Actually the problem is that PHP & MySQL have no patchup in XP.
Isn’t?
July 26th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I haven’t tired it on XP but there shouldn’t be any problem IMO.
August 14th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Any idea why the MySQL service fails to start? I keep getting “Could not start the service MySQL” from the Instance Configuration Wizard. I have removed the service and the “instance”, uninstalled and reinstalled many times, and still cannot get the service to start.
August 14th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Hi Sean, I’ currently not on the machine I’ve set this up, but since you said its a service not starting issue try the following:
Start -> Run -> services.msc & search for a MySQL service here, see if it is disabled or something. I’lll check this up on my other machine as well, if I can duplicate the issue & find a solution.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Hey, I’ve removed the service multiple times using ’sc’ from the command line. There are no MySQL, MySQL51, etc. services present. As it turns out, it had something to do with the my system really not liking InnoDB. Once I told it to configure a “transactionless” server, everything worked fine.
Actually, I’m working on a much larger problem. I need some sort of a server setup for testing purposes on my Windows 7 desktop. I’ve tried the builtin IIS, and made large strides, but in the end encountered so many headaches, that I gave up. I think I’m gonna try one of the old devside.net server suites. I need something to experiment with Joomla!, which uses mysql and php. Permissions on IIS7.5 turned out to be hellishly complicated… maybe Apache will work better for me.
Anyways, thanks for your response!
August 14th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Hey Sean, interesting wouldn’t have found that honestly. If you’re trying to do something like that, I’d suggest you use a Windows Server OS. They’re comparatively more hassle free from what I’ve seen, though not done much on this end.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Yeah, perhaps, but from what I’ve seen, Windows Server 2008 looks quite similar to IIS 7.5 embeded in Windows 7 Ultimate. It’s funny, I place more confidence in an Apache configuration running on top of Windows… and ironically, it seems to be working quite a bit better. It’s a lot easier setting all the permissions in conf files, than trying to use a combination of that stupid IIS_IUSRS account and the very confusing GUI associated with IIS.
September 26th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Thanx a lot manan,
it helped a lot!
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 am
This was a HUGE help! One thing though: the Windows Installer version of PHP does not install the mcrypt extension and you can see from the screen shots that phpMyAdmin complains about that. I don’t know if it’s crucial or not to have it, but I hate errors so I found out how to fix it. Simply go to Control Panel, Programs, right-click on PHP 5.2.11 and select change. Then add the mcrypt extension. Then add these lines to the php.ini file:
[PHP_MCRYPT]
extension=php_mcrypt.dll
November 24th, 2009 at 10:54 am
thanks for the heads up! Appreciate it
December 9th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
The best method is to go for WAMP, a no brainer for configuration and hence a developer can focus on web development instead of figuring out ways to get things up and running.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:49 am
True there are alternatives. I had to use this for WPI and it helps a lot.
March 9th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Manan,
I followed all the steps you have posted. I could get as far as the login page of phpmyadmin .I am unable to login after that . I get the error “#2002 – The server is not responding (or the local MySQL server’s socket is not correctly configured)” . How to get past this ? Thanks in advance.