Installation blues

Hello, I am trying to setup a dev environment on my Win XP Pro SP2 system. I already have MySql Community server v5.0.24. I install Apache server v2.2.8 with SSL on localhost. I install PHP version 5.2.5 using the installer selecting : MySql MySqli Installations work fine! However, when I startup Apache, I see that it is unable to load the mysql extension dlls. I have lost 2 days trying to get this to work. Has anyone managed to get this working ? If so, would you be willing to share your steps. I do not realy want to resort to one of those prebuilt, all-in-one, packages. My real aim is to try and have a setup as close as I can to my ISP. Hope someone can help. Best regards Simon