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phpwindowsphpmyadminapache2.2mbstring

PMA error : mbstring is missing


I am running on Windows 7 64 bit with:

  • Apache 2.2
  • PHP 5.2.8
  • MySQL 5.1 (essentials)

installed and configured manually. As you all know, for this since MySQL essentials has no GUI for interaction the best suit is PhpMyAdmin. I am trying to get phpMyAdmin-4.0.10.8-english, downloaded from the PMA website, into my Apache web server.

After all configuration work, now I get an error message when I try to log into PMA saying:

"The mbstring extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration."

In this forum it was mentioned that possible causes for this are the unavailability of php_mbstring.dll in php folder or else the extension_dir variable in php.ini is set to ./ which is the current folder.

I checked in the ext folder and the .dll file is available and the extension_dir variable is set to ./ext. And I tried setting the variable to C:/php/ext which is the absolute location, still it doesn't work. Any help on this concern would be much appreciated!


Solution

  • Probably the mbstring extension is just not activated in php.ini. Look for the line

    ;extension mbstring = php_mbstring.dll 
    

    and remove the leading ;

    Also make sure that you are looking at the correct php.ini since there could be more than one in your installation.