sde, this might sound crazy, but i used the installer and still nothing.
if you look closely in
http://www.php.net/downloads.php u will see that in the 4.3.8 version it is stated that it comes with mysql support built in, but in version 5 there is no mention of that.
can you think of a way to get version 5 to support mysql if that is the case?
i think ill install version 4.3.8 as im pretty sure it will solve this problem.