Sorry for such basic and dumb question but kindly view details before ignoring this question.

I have had used xampp for a long time. I like it due to its easy to use and friendly applications unless you need to use ASP and PHP both (talking about xampp 1.xx not sure about latest free versions). I have faced many times the problem of port destruction by using xampp+IIS server.

In conclusion I have tried many times (searching) to manually install PHP, I have heard that in this way you can use ASP and PHP at a time.

Would someone kindly instruct an easy step by step method to let me understand the procedure to manually install PHP?

Thank You in Advance.

For separate installation you need PHP, some server and some data base if you need. http://php.net/downloads.php

Independent of php pack (zip, tar.gz or exe) extract files in some folder (C:\PHP for Win). If you are on win copy ini.php in system folder (C:\WINDOWS\system32) and then you need some customization in this file. All instructions are in php.ini. Then give instructions for run php on server. This is independent of server. (For example: application/x-httpd-php for my). On the end (I am not sure for IIS) you need to write server number and name for each site in host file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc).
For example : 127.0.0.1 localhost

Sorry if this post is little bit confuse.

just follow manual instructions for IIS on php.net

I use a mac and have MAMP installed. It really does a nice job working as a test server. You can turn it off when you are not using it. It also allows for multiple sites. I really like it.

I am having trouble installing PHP 5.2.5 on my Win XP SP2 computer with IIS 5.1. It installs but doesn't actually run the PHP script after you create and open a PHP file in IE. Anyone have any ideas?.....................

@highmigh check your IIS logs to see what's wrong.