PWS Installation Crashes on Win98, Help!

[bob_pitbull]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this or not, please move the thread if it isn't...? It's not a vBulletin installation I'm having problems with, it's PWS...

I'm starting to learn PHP, and would like to install PWS so that I can test my programs offline....... I'm using the book "Beginning PHP4" as a reference. They state that the version of PWS on the Win98 CD is the easiest to install... this worries me now, as I've tried installing it, only to get a crash in Sysocmgr... the crash information is no help, just the standard:-

"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down"...

Does anyone know of any "issues" with the installer, should I be looking for a newer version of PWS, or...?

The first time I tried to install it, there was an error message along the lines that something couldn't be written into the registry... I didn't write down the error message though, and despite repeated install/uninstalls, the error message won't repeat - instead I just get the above crash now ...

Any advice on how to go ahead would be greatly appreciated, as I'd like to move off the first chapter of the book! ...

[bob_pitbull]

I found something on the Microsoft site describing my exact problem and a "resolution"...

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q246/0/81.ASP

But.... when I try to uninstall the bits that installed ok I get the following error message:-

"Call to ICatalogUpdate::ApplyChanges failed. Error code = 0x8007000e"

And then the uninstall quits... trying to install PWS again at this point, with the patch MS mention implemented, I get a crash in Sysocmgr.exe :( ...

Anyone any ideas what could be going on? The patch is required because, apparently, my registry is "quite large"...