For years I have had problems running the mssql driver. Its getting phased out – i.e. it doesn’t work with PHP 5.3 but if you have to support older applications then you need to use the mssql driver. The problem is, is that the default installation of PHP 5.2 (currently PHP 5.2.17) which you can download from http://windows.php.net just doesn’t work with the mssql driver.

The problem is the ntwdblib.dll. The version that has always worked for me is 2000.80.194.0 – all others fail. The version that comes with the PHP msi installer (I use the 64 bit installer) is version 2000.80.2039, which should in theory be newer and work better. So each time I install PHP I then have to go in and overwrite the dll.

The next problem you have is finding a reliable dll. The proper way to get it is from the SQL Server 2000 SP4 installation (yes, the file is that old). If you google for the file there’s no pages that I find that seem a trust worthy resource for this file.

So I’ve uploaded the file to my site n.b. its a different site from this WordPress blog as I doubt WordPress.com will allow me to upload dlls.

Download

• File download: http://ianchanning.com/files/ntwdblib.dll
• File name: ntwdblib.dll
• File size: 268 KB
• Version: 2000.80.194.0
• MD5: 4a76e50c4921ca9a35c5bb3c010b0cf8