Question

I’m having a really difficult time trying to get php to connect to SQL Server 2005. It seems like no matter what I do or what page I visit, I either get the wrong extension/driver or find a dead link. The most recent attempt was php_sqlsrv_52_ts_vc6.dll which apparently doesn’t support anything prior to 2008.

After over two days of searching, I’m lost, and upgrading either php or SQL Server is not an option unfortunately…

EDIT:
Everything is running on IIS 6 – Server 2003 (Same box).

Answer 1

Your problem probably is that you are running IIS6, which will require the nts-version.

Additionally you have to install the SQL Server Native Client 2008, which is a bit misleading as it will still work with MSSQL 2005.

It should go something like this:

1. Download SQL Server Driver 2.0 for PHP
2. Place the dll (5.2 nts) into PHP’s ext-folder
3. Enable the extension in the php.ini extension=sqlsrv*.dll
4. Install a recent version of Microsoft’s Native Client (e.g. from the SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack)
5. Restart your web server.

I use Apache, so I’m not sure if there is anything else to do on IIS or whether some of the steps differ, but this is how I got it working.