Install PHP Manager for IIS Windows Server 2012 r2

If you're using PHP on Windows with IIS you most certainly know the PHP Manager for IIS tool, an excellent GUI that integrates within the IIS Manager interface as a snap-in that you can use to flawlessly manage your PHP installation(s) on your IIS server machine. Installing it is just as simple as launching the Web Platform Installer  (through the IIS Manager interface itself), then select it and add to your environment.

This is your preferred choice not only because of simplicity, yet also because that way you will get the last build of the software (1.4 at the time of speaking), which addresses a specific issue that affected the previous releases (=< 1.3) on most Windows 10 machines. The problem is well-documented here: to quickly summarize it, the PHP Manager setup program checks that the registry value HKLM/System/CCS/Services/W3SVC/Parameters/MajorVersion  is >= 7 to ensure that it's being installed on IIS7 and later: however, when you're running Windows 10 with the last IIS version, the registry value is 0xA, which (oddly) evaluates that condition to false, thus making the installer crash.

Here's an example of the error log:

The workaround there was pretty simple: change that value to 9 (or 8, or 7), let the software install, then bring it back to the previous value. Luckily enough, as said above, the PHP Manager staff released the 1.4 build which had this problem fixed for good. However, if you're installing it manually and using a previous version, you would still be hit by that issue. Since there's an official build that now addresses it our suggestion is to get it, thus avoiding the above workaround: however, in case you need the good old fix, here it is for your convenience.