PHP, ask questions

hallo ..., my name is ralf and i read the comments from the last weeks about "download a file" with php on http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php. i tryed a few of this examples, but i have still a problem with downloading a file, i.e. a "ms-word file" or a pdf-file or something else: i can not open these files because of every file is damaged after the download. i work with windows xp, apache server(apache_2.0.40-win32-) , mysql and of course php(php-4.0.4). do you have any idea of the problem or can you give me an avice where i can ask this question? maybe it's a very simple and known problem for you. i work with php since a few weeks and it seems to be very difficult to solve this problem for me. thanks ralf