I SOLVED IT! The default php.ini has the extension directory like this: extension_dir = "./" Now being a noob, I look up a couple lines and see include_path = ".;c:\php\includes" so I figure I should add a semi-colon and append my own extension directory to extension_dir. But PHP doesn't like that it seems, the correct way: extension_dir = "F:\php\ext" I can't believe you folks didn't see that :-) Does this mean you can't have multiple paths for extension_dir?