Install Acquia Drupal via Microsoft Web Platform Installer
I selected Acquia Drupal in the Platform Installer and just leaned back and woops
And I tried to launch the site BLAHHHH 500 Internal Server Error
I’m on Windows 7 Profressional with IIS 7.5 and Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0
Error: PHP FastCGI can’t find php executable
Now what?
After looking at the settings for FastCGI in IIS7 i found out that php-cgi.exe wasn’t installed in folder C:\Program Files\PHP\ where settings pointed it to be!
Solution
I Downloaded PHP 5.2.12 (the version available via the Platform Installer) Installer version and within installation I could Change my PHP installation and simply added everything (all extensions, manual etc.), now you’ve got the php-cgi.exe in C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe 
I must admit installing ALL extension lead me to having all the extension enabled in php.ini. And I got errors when trying to run php.exe and disabled the extensions it said it was missing dlls for (e.g. OCI.dll, aspell-1.5.dll libcs.dll and more) just disable the extensions at the bottom of the php.ini file.
And know you’re ready to go finish you install with configure your site: http://localhost/acquia-drupal/install.php
Happy Drupalling!
January 8th, 2010 - 11:12
On Windows, you could also give the Acquia Stack Installer a try. You can download Windows and Mac versions as well as a .deb package for Ubuntu/Debian Linux at http://acquia.com/downloads
Our experience at Acquia, gained from a lot of feedback and directly at training and community events, is that this often runs more smoothly than the Platform Installer. Tip: On Vista and Windows 7 it helps if you right click the install file and select the “run as administrator” option.
Glad you’re up and running nonetheless!
Cheers,
- jam
–
Jeffrey A. McGuire
Senior Writer, Evangelist
Acquia Inc.
jam (at) acquia.com
March 24th, 2010 - 02:43
Awesome! Thanks! With this one search result I finally understand why the Web Platform Installer failed me after about 10 Drupal install attempts. And, thanks to Jam, I now know that I can safely ditch using it in favor of the DAMP installer! Thanks for that!
I really fell in love with Drupal when testing the TurnKeyLinux VM of it, but we’re a Windows shop and there is substantial resistance to “alien” technology. Hopefully, I can get similar results using the DAMP installer for Windows.