I'm developing an IOT project where a client will run on a micro-controller and will be configured and fed data via a backend web server and database. I'm a newbie when it comes to web servers but I successfully installed IIS & PHP on Windows 10. Over several days I wrote a bunch of test web pages with embedded PHP to learn how to drive them. The test pages did what was expected so all was well.
I then found that after a laptop reboot the test pages no longer worked - the HTML was executed OK but the embedded PHP scripts were ignored. There are no IIS or PHP run time error messages. I've checked the configuration of IIS and PHP and all seems fine as far as I can tell. I would understand it if the test pages had never worked, as that would imply I'd got the installation wrong, but to have worked and then to stop working when there have been no changes seems strange.
I don't know whether PHP runs as a background process listening for calls or whether IIS spawns it when it encounters PHP, but I can't see any background processes in Windows Task Manager that look like they're related to PHP. I half expected to see php-cgi.exe running in the background as it's been defined as the FastCgi handler module in the IIS configuration.
If I invoke any of the test pages from the command line using "php.exe filename.php" then the PHP code executes as expected (of course the HTML does not) - so at least php is working from the command line.
In case it's relevant I installed PHP using the instructions here.
Any suggestions appreciated.