variables not working

Hi there I have just installed PHP5 and Apache2 on a Windows 2K computer. Everything seems to work OK, I see the default Apache screen, and I can run phpinfo() and get the page full of data. I can even connect to my mySQL database. But I can't transfer a simple variable from a form to another php file. However it does work if I use $_POST['inputdata']. I would much rather be able to use simple variables, and cannot work out what I have done wrong, or need to change. The code for the pages is extremely basic but I have reproduced it below. <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <body> <form action="formto.php" method="post" name="form1"> <input name="inputdata" type="text" id="inputdata" size="20" maxlength="20"> <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"> </form> </body> </html> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <body> <?php // here I check that a simple statement will print echo "Hello World"; ?> <br /> <?php // here I create a variable, give it a value and print it $testvariable = 'testdata'; echo $testvariable; ?> <br /> the word that you entered was <?php // this is the input from my form print $inputdata; // but it will not appear here ?> <br /> <br /> <?php // however it WILL appear here echo $_POST['inputdata']; ?> <br /> </body> </html> I would very much appreciate any help that you can provide, I've been going nowhere for hours with this! (it works fine on my hosting companies server) Thanks Eric Lewis