I recently ran into the following error when trying to launch PhpMyAdmin from the WAMP icon tray menu:

phpMyAdmin – Error
Cannot load mysql extension. Please check your PHP configuration.

What does this mean?

In a nutshell, PHP cannot find the library (mysql.dll – on Windows) it needs to connect to MySQL.

How can you fix this?

1. Use phpInfo() to find out what php.ini file PHP is using. It’s near the top.
2. Go into your php.ini and enable the extension that loads the mysql.dll library.
3. Set your Windows ‘Path’ to point to the directory where the mysql.dll is sitting.
4. Restart Windows.

The solution (and more details) can be found in this video:

Tip: Try the full-screen mode for the video .. it’s pretty nice.

I hope you find this useful.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook (All around nerd.)

www.killerphp.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Beginners PHP Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.