2.8.3 on Windows XP

OpenEMR Development
1

openemrhq wrote on Wednesday, April 30, 2008:

In an earlier post, someone mentioned that they could not get 2.8.3 to run on Windows XP and I’m wondering what issue you encountered with it? I just setup 2.8.3 on my dev machine and it runs fine. Can anyone give me an idea of what issues you’re experiencing so I know where to look?

Thanks,
Dave Kennerson
OpenEMR HQ, Inc

2

ajonate wrote on Wednesday, April 30, 2008:

Yes, I tried installing 2.8.3 in the exact same environment (xampp 1.4.16 under php4) that worked successfully for 2.8.1. The database tables built fine, but instead of seeing the OpenEMR login page I get the following error.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sqlconnect() (previously declared in C:\xampp\htdocs\openemr\library\sql.inc:24) in c:\xampp\htdocs\openemr\library\sql.inc on line 24

3

drbowen wrote on Wednesday, April 30, 2008:

We have not had problems previously with minimum version requirements but this may be a php version issue.

This was posted in another thread (by Dave)

****
Fileinfo 1.0.4-11.6 requires php5.2.5-12.1. Previously I had php5.1.2 installed.

****

Try switching the PHP 4 to PHP 5 and give it a go.

Fileinfo was recently added and this may be the problem.

Sam Bowen, MD

4

drbowen wrote on Wednesday, April 30, 2008:

Version 2.8.1 worked only on PHP 4.  Since 2.8.2 we have been using PHP 5.  We are trying to maintain backwards compatibility with PHP 4 as long as possible, at least until the PHP team gives up on security updates for PHP 4.

It was reported by Mike while working on a Intel 64 bit installation.

Sam Bowen, MD

5

ajonate wrote on Thursday, May 01, 2008:

I tried switching xampp 1.4.16 to php5 but got the same error.

I browsed the version notes for xampp and it appears that 1.6.5 was the oldest version that has php5.2.5, so I downloaded & installed xampplite1.6.5. After installing OpenEMR it worked fine except for the Smarty error, which went away when I created the required directories.

Thanks!

6

gutiersa wrote on Sunday, May 18, 2008:

Greetings!

Just in case this is still an issue, something similar happened to me yesterday.

I was getting the message:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sqlconnect() (previously declared in F:\xampp\htdocs\openemr\library\sql.inc:24) in H:\xampp\htdocs\openemr\library\sql.inc on line 24

My windows system has an F: drive (the drive where all programs get installed) because of my previous Emr I had to map it to H: this happens automatically everytime the system starts. In globals I had set webserver_root to:

$webserver_root = "H:\\Program Files\\xampp\htdocs\openemr";

when I changed it to:

$webserver_root = "F:\\Program Files\\xampp\htdocs\openemr";

the problem went away and I was able to log in.

Consider changing the case of c in $webserver_root in globals.php. That is make it:

$webserver_root = "C:\\xampp\htdocs\openemr";

and not

$webserver_root = "c:\\xampp\htdocs\openemr";

7

fbll wrote on Thursday, July 17, 2008:

Thanks Gutiersa

I got the same message: 
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sqlconnect() (previously declared in F:\xampp\htdocs\openemr\library\sql.inc:24) in H:\xampp\htdocs\openemr\library\sql.inc on line 24

And I solve it changing the case of c in $webserver_root in globals.php, using uppercase instead of lowercase as you told. That is make it: 
$webserver_root = "C:\\xampp\htdocs\openemr"; 

and not 

$webserver_root = "c:\\xampp\htdocs\openemr";

Fantastic!!

8

drbowen wrote on Thursday, July 17, 2008:

Generally Windows is generally not sensitive to case.  I think this case sensitivity comes from using the PHP as the programming language that drives OpenEMR.

It also seems to work better if you use Unix style forward slashes:

$webserver_root = "C://xampp/htdocs/openemr";

Sam Bowen, MD

9

rpl121 wrote on Sunday, August 24, 2008:

Along this line, I tried, as a novelty only, moving the entire \xampp subdirectory to a removabe flash drive.  This moved all the Windows programs and the data and the documents subdirectory.

I changed the paths in the globals.php file to reflect the new location for everything:  F: drive not the C: drive.

Then I put this flash drive into a computer that did not have any xampp files or experience, and I clicked setup_xampp on the list of programs.  That configured xampp to work properly completely from the flash drive.

Then I was able to log into my data and do everything including reading saved documents.  With the old USB and an old fashioned 1 GB flash drive, it was painfully slow and not at all impressive.  Nevertheless, it did function.

This was with version 2.9.0

This suggests that a demo version of OpenEMR will work on a flash drive if one can speed things up a bit.  I wonder whether it is the old USB connection.

10

rpl121 wrote on Saturday, October 04, 2008:

I have a Windows XP installation of OpenEMR installed on a Windows computer – for demo purposes and for playing around.  I bought one of those USB external hard drives and copied the entire \xampp directory to the hard drive.  This directory includes all the files necessary to run Apache, MySQL, OpenEMR.

Then I was able to another Windows computer that had no files related to OpenEMR, Apache, MySQL etc and run OpenEMR right off the hard drive.  Performance was excellent.

All that was necessary was to change the drive letter in two places in the globals.php.  (The external drive is going to be some letter other than C:.  Then I had to click some file that "initialized xampp" or something like that and voila.

This could be a good way to get a demo version of OpenEMR up and running on anybody’s computer instantly and without fuss.  It could also be a very fast emergency rescue plan if necessary.  I wouldn’t trust the security features of the Windows installation without expert advice, however.

Ronald Leemhuis MD