“Fatal Error: Call to undefined function mb_detect_encoding()” when trying to run phpMyAdmin 4.2.7 on IIS 8 with PHP 5.4.30

Question

I have PHP 5.4.30 installed and running well using the FastCGI module and IIS 8 (on Windows 8.1). I have MySQL installed and would like to manage it with phpMyAdmin, however, I get this error whenever I try to access the page:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_detect_encoding() in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\phpmyadmin\libraries\php-gettext\gettext.inc on line 177

Many older threads I have seen suggest adding extensions to the php.ini, but in the later versions of php, the php.ini file becomes php.ini-production and php.ini-development . Whenever I try to modify either of these files or create a php.ini file, I get an error 500 when trying to visit other php pages. I have also seen many solutions related to Xampp / Apache, but none of them seem to work in IIS 8 (that I have found).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

You probably need the php_mbstring.dll file installed. You can find it on the PHP Windows Extensions page