A Problem Shared . . . » php mssql http://www.moorlandit.net A blog of problems . . . and solutions Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:18:28 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 PHP mssql_connect() unable to connect to server http://www.moorlandit.net/index.php/2008/11/php-mssql_connect-unable-to-connect-to-server-78?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=php-mssql_connect-unable-to-connect-to-server http://www.moorlandit.net/index.php/2008/11/php-mssql_connect-unable-to-connect-to-server-78#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:47:27 +0000 Steve http://www.moorlandit.net/?p=78 Running PHP on a Windows 2003 Server and connecting to Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 we found that sometimes the PHP script could connect to the SQL Server but most of the time we’d get ‘mssql_connect() unable to connect to server’.

After Googling the problem I found a lot of references to needing NTWDBLIB.DLL version 2000.80.194.0 rather than the 2000.2.8.0 version that ships with PHP. I copied the DLL from with Windows\system32 folder to the PHP folder and that fixed the problem, for 2minutes! – then we were back to ‘mssql_connect() unable to connect to server’.

I also saw lots of references to Named Pipes and TCP/IP connections so I went into the SQL Server Client Network Utility. Both Named Pipes and TCP/IP were enabled so I changed the protocol order to move Named Pipes above TCP/IP and that fixed the problem – permanently.

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