Hello. first off the version I list is just a guess because I can't get in dashboard to find the correct version. I just know the version is like 6 months old.
I'm using XAMPP on a Windows 7 machine. Yesterday i got into the wordpress site to do some work and there was an update notification. Tried to update automatically and it would complain about too much time. Downloaded the version off the web separately and when I tried to install it complained about the file size.
Someone on the web suggested changing setting in the php.ini file. I changed to what they recommended. Then there was a complaint about another setting, which I changed.
Upshot - Now when I try to get to the index or the dashboard, I get this error:
"Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress."
I tried changing all the settings back and restarting XAMPP. Nope. Same message.
I looked around for solutions to this problem, most of them are 9 or 10 years old and the solutions don't work.
For instance I have this:
extension=php_mysql.dll
extension=php_mysqli.dll
I'm wondering, if nothing else, is it possible to get a fresh copy of php.ini?