[wolfwalkereci]

Was bored and wanted to update my localhost phpbb3 portal and needed php5 installed to do it.
Previously I used apache 2.0.55 and php 4.4.2

If you try this backup your old stuff. If you modify the windows path you need to restart the computer for change to take effect.

Took me a few minutes to figure it out but this is what I took notes on:

Using the following:

http://www.apachelounge.com/download/
*** you see a link for VC10 SP1 vcredist_x86.exe , that link is broken, head to microcraps website and just copy / paste vcredist_x86.exe in the search box at the top and install it if you need it. I installed the 64bit apache earlier to play with it and thus installed the VC10 dist for 64bit and have no issues with the x86 working for me. No install of VC10 on this machine ***
httpd-2.4.2-win32.zip
php5apache2_4.dll-php-5.4-win32.zip

http://windows.php.net/downloads/releases/archives/
php-5.4.0-Win32-VC9-x86.zip

Unziped apache to C:\apache24
Unziped php to C:\php5

Added C:\php5 to system path
php.ini uncomment extension=php_mysql.dll
php.ini set extension_dir = C:\php5\ext
php.ini set doc_root = "c:\web"
php.ini set error_reporting = E_ALL
php.ini adjusted other fields to personal settings

httpd.conf set ServerRoot "c:/Apache24"
httpd.conf set Listen 80
httpd.conf set LoadModule php5_module "c:/php5/php5apache2_4.dll"
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
PHPIniDir "C:/php5"
httpd.conf set ServerName localhost:80
httpd.conf set DocumentRoot "C:/web"
httpd.conf set <Directory "c:/web">
httpd.conf set DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.htm index.php
httpd.conf set ScriptAlias /php/ "c:/php5/"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
Action application/x-httpd-php "/php5/php.exe"

ISSUES: shitty ass error about old passwords. Something like "Connect Error (2000) mysqlnd cannot connect to MySQL 4.1+ using old authentication"

FIX:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...authentication
Opened Navicat --> mysql --> Query --> New Query
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'old_passwords';

(in the MySQL command line client, HeidiSQL or whatever frontend you like) whether the server is set to use the old password schema by default. If this returns old_passwords,Off you just happen to have old password entries in the users tables. The MySQL will use the old authentication routine for these accounts. But you can simply set a new password for the account and the new routine will be used.
You can check which routine will be used by taking a look at the mysql.users table (with an account that has access to that table)

SELECT `User`, `Host`, Length(`Password`) FROM mysql.user;

This will return 16 for accounts with old passwords and 41 for accounts with new passwords (and 0 for accounts with no password at all, you might want to take care of those as well).
Either use the user managements tools of the MySQL front end (if there are any) or

SET PASSWORD FOR 'User'@'Host'=PASSWORD('yourpassword');
FLUSH Privileges

(replace User and Host with the values you' got from the previous query). Then check the length of the password again. It should be 41 now and mysqlnd should be able to connect to the server.

Edit: Everyone has their own quirks doing the installs but I noticed that the magelo and allaclone tools actually work 100% for me now, when previously much of those tools refused to work at all.