note 94317 modified in install.windows.iis7 by pajoye

The default installation of Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 adds a line to the Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts which causes network functions (database connect functions too, like mysql_connect) to timeout when connecting to "localhost". To resolve this problem, remove the entry from the hosts file: ::1 localhost or connect using the IP address, 127.0.0.1 or another domain name. This behavior change is due to IPv6 being enabled by default in Vista or other recent Windows version. Now you can use the x64 snapshot builds of 5.3 on these new windows platforms to run a completely up to date 64-bit fastcgi configuration! --was-- The default installation of Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 adds a line to the Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts which causes mysql_connect to timeout when connecting to "localhost". To resolve this problem, remove the entry from the hosts file: ::1 localhost or connect using the IP address, 127.0.0.1 or another domain name. This behavior change is due to PHP 5.3 and above using mysqlnd instead of libmysql.dll. Now you can use the x64 snapshot builds of 5.3 on these new windows platforms to run a completely up to date 64-bit fastcgi configuration! http://php.net/manual/en/install.windows.iis7.php