Installing APC in Windows

Introduction

APC (Alternative PHP Cache) is a PHP opcode cache. It stores PHP pages in RAM and reduces hard disk activity. This makes a real difference to the performance in Moodle, and you should be able to achieve a 50% increase in system capacity.

This guide is for installation of APC on a Windows server. The instructions have been tested on a Windows 2003 server, and they should also be applicable if you are using Windows XP as a test server.

Installation on Windows Server

Follow these steps to install APC.

Download the correct version

Download the windows binary for the PHP version you have installed from http://pecl4win.php.net/ext.php/php_apc.dll. Save into the PHP extensions folder, which is c:\php\ext by default.

Note: Make sure you choose the right extension for your version (branch) of PHP.

Enable the APC extension in your PHP.INI file

Edit the php.ini file and add the following line in the extensions section:

extension = php_apc.dll

Check that this has worked by restarting your web server and looking at the output of phpinfo.

Check the physical free space available to the server in task manager: