PHP issues

I spent about 3 hours trying to install PHP onto Apache even with tutorials nothing is working. I did this on my Windows 7 machine. It installed "successfully" but every time I navigate to the php file using http://localhost/index.php URL, it tries to download it, meaning that PHP is not running like it should. It also keeps saying a dll is missing every time I try to run it.

[citricsquid]

http://wampserver.com use wamp, much easier than doing it manually. However, if you're dead set on doing it manually and wamp isn't suitable, do you mind giving a better explanation of what you've done so far? Is apache running?

[TheRyoku]

Also, you might want to try google searching for that missing DLL. That could be all you need.