PHP IIS 5.0 Include files and baldness

I'm ripping my hair out, mainly because my customer is really getting antsy for this to work. He has a credit app online running on our NT server under IIS 5.0 It calls and include file (missing.inc) when it finds an empty field once the form is submitted. The missing.inc is suppose to say sorry but you left $missing blank. Instead of doing that, it just reloads the credit app. Any help at all would be much appreciated. This is the include file (missing.inc) in it's entirety <?php if(!isset($missing)) $missing = ""; echo("<center><font color='#000000' face='verdana' size='7'><b>Oops!<br><br></font><font color='#000000' face='verdana' size='4' class='ninept'>The $missing field was not filled out.<br><br></b></font>\n"); echo("<font color='#000000' face='verdana' size='4' class='ninept'><b>Please go <A HREF='../creditapp.php'>back to the form</A> and fill out the $missing field. Thank you.</b></font></center>\n"); ?> I did set the include_path in my php.ini I've set it to ..\inc;c:\php\includes It deffinatly seems to be accesing the missing.inc file. If i change the permisions on missing.inc i can get it to ask me for a password everytime i submit the form, that's how i know it's tryign to read the file, it just doesn't seem to do anythign with it.