"could not find driver" using sqlsrv for PDO

Question

We're trying to set up a work environment using the following specs:

• Symfony 2.3.4
• MS SQL Server 2008
• PHP 5.5.6, x86, thread safe
• SQLSRV PDO drivers for PHP 5.5
• Windows 7 x64
• XAMPP 1.8.3, Apache is x86
• SQL Server 2012 Native Client, x64 (x86 could not be installed)
• Visual C++ (can't remember the version) x86 and x64

However, when we try to make a query to the database, we get a "could not find driver" error and no operation can be done. In the phpinfo() I can see the drivers are not registered properly and I get two errors when Apache loads, but none has a message and in the PHP logs the error is "unknown" at line 0.

What could be the problem? Thank you beforehand.

Answer 1

The issue was that I didn't have the Visual C++ Redistributable package. I realized this after rebooting the computer and getting a MSVCP110.dll missing error in a system dialog box rather than a dialog box from XAMPP.

If anyone else is having this very same issue, download Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 here, in the Microsoft website. Although the computer works with a x64 architecture, I downloaded the x86 version and it worked. Make your choice but I'd recommend doing the same, because PHP is x86 only (x64 is merely experimental and the drivers are x86 aswell).