$_POST won't work for me

Ladies and Gentlemen, Thankyou for this opportunity of picking someones brains before I tear the place apart. I am just starting with PHP but have encountered an insurmountable hurdle.. I need to work through HTML form "posting" examples to a PHP script. ONE STEP after "Hello World" I have taken the following steps: 1: My php.ini (The only one on the system ) is located in /etc/php.ini Because I am using an above 4.1 version of PHP I have manually altered the values of register_globals = On 2: I have repeatedly stopped and restarted Apache webserver. (Version 2) 3. I have a "Hello World" HTML - > hello.php that loads and runs succesfully hence I have a valid Webserver PHP HTML connection with my browser. 4. In "Hello World I have taken the liberty of including a phpinfo() 5. The output of phpinfo() among others reveals: post_max_size 8M 8M precision 14 14 register_argc_argv On On register_globals On On safe_mode Off Off 5. I should ???? be able to use GLOBALS ( even if this will become a health hazard later on) 6. I have used the two examples from PHP's Documentation. Literally cut and paste... "Action.html "

<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type"> <title>filsform</title> </head> <body> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fils Form<br> <br> <br> </span> <div style="text-align: left;"> <form action="action.php" method="post"> Name: <input name="name" type="text"><br> Email: <input name="email" type="text"><br> <input name="submit" value="Submit me!" type="submit"></form> <br> <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span></div> </div> </body> </html>

and action.php

<html> <head> <title>PHP Test</title> </head> <body> HI <?php echo $_POST['name']; ?>. Your email <?php echo $_POST['email']; ?> </body> </html>

7. After submitting "action.html" action.php loads and prints Hi Your email The contents of $_POST['name'] and $_POST['email'] appear to be unavailable to action.php. If I understand the documentation correctly this should not be the case and whatever strings are filled in the form of action.html should now be available??? What or where or how or why or whatever ????? must I do next... ???? Many thanks for those interested in advance Fil