ajonate wrote on Monday, April 21, 2008:
Thank you for your reply.
Indeed, I believe you are correct about the path. Instead of using double back-slashes in the globals.php file for the $webserver_root path, use single forward-slashes to make the path work properly.
The recipe for Windows Server 2003 posted at the oemr.org Windows howto page is much closer to the mark than the original Windows XP howto. By gleaning a little information from both howto guides I eventually found a way to make it work, but my ultimate goal was to create an “idiot proof” install script that can install OpenEMR on Windows XP Pro quickly and easily. I believe I have finally done that. I have created a CD that installs Apache, MySQL, and OpenEMR 2.8.1 on Windows XP Pro automatically in less than 10 minutes using a single batch file. I haven’t tested my CD on Windows Server 2003, but since Server 2003 has file permission and native web server issues that don’t exist on Windows XP, I suspect that adjustments would need to me made to make it work for Server 2003.
The problems with xampp 1.4.16 are severe, but not insurmountable. The first problem with xampp 1.4.16 is that by default the installer will place xampp in the “c:\program files” directory, but the conf files for Apache expect to find Apache in the “c:\xampp\apache” directory. The result is that the Apache service can’t start when using the default path that’s provided during installation. The installer also won’t allow the c:\ directory to be specified without putting a space after it (like "C:\ "), but it will work fine with the space. I toyed with the idea of modifying the Apache conf files instead, but it soon became apparent that it was going to be a lot easier to simply change the install directory.
Another problem with xampp is that the 1.4.16 and 1.4.15 xampp files at SourceForge contain a virus payload. AVG Antivirus reports that the phpcli.exe file located in the \xampp\php\php4\ directory carries the PSW.Legendmir trojan. That’s a password logger that’s not particularly dangerous from a damage standpoint, but it is a security risk. The good news is that AVG can heal it, leaving behind a phpcli.exe file that still works well. Therefore, I didn’t use the xampp installer for my CD, since I needed to heal the virus before CD distribution.
I don’t have a good explanation for the radical behavior differences between the oemr.org Windows howto pages and the reality of xampp 1.4.16 today, but it’s evident that the xampp 1.4.16 files at SourceForge today are not the same files that used to be there. However, by healing the virus and installing in the proper directory, xampp 1.4.16 works well and is probably the most stable solution for OpenEMR 2.8.1.
Once everything (including OpenEMR) is installed and running properly, the entire c:\xampp directory structure can be saved for the purpose of copying it to a different computer to create another server machine. After copying the directory structure to a new machine only a couple of things need to be done to get it running.
1) Install mysql-connector-odbc-3.51.12-win32
2) Run the service installation batch file in c:\xampp\apache
3) Run the service installation batch file in c:\xampp\mysql\
The batch file I’ve written automates the copy process and the above tasks. The batch file also copys a shortcut for the xampp-control program and a “getting started with OpenEMR” help file to the desktop. The batch file includes a number of comments as well, so when the install process is finished the user is instructed to open his web browser, navigate to http://localhost/openemr, and login using the default username & password.
From the reading I’ve done it’s become clear to me that practitioners are faced with the choice of either becoming Linux jocks themselves or paying thousands to a consultant for an OpenEMR installation. The Virtual Appliance is a terrific product from an installation standpoint, but still no escape from Linux and a terribly bloated environment. The install I propose only uses about 250 megs of hard drive space, about 50 megs of memory (7 for MySQL + 40 for Apache), and runs nicely on even a 1 GHz Pentium III machine. Moreover, anyone with minimal computer experience can administrate a Windows XP OpenEMR server, and it really isn’t too much to ask to expect an office receptionist or nurse to do so.
Now that I have a simple OpenEMR install method, it would be extremely valuable to find a way to include FreeB and SQL-Ledger in a Windws XP installation. In the meantime Windows users are stuck with an OpenEMR-only installation and need to locate a third-party billing product.