Apache and php on Windows 7 x64

I've been having some joy this evening getting these two to configure correctly. Firstly, I downloaded the following files:

• apache_2.2.14-win32-x86-openssl-0.9.8k.msi
• php-5.3.1-Win32-VC6-x86.msi

I installed Apache, no problem. I installed php, no problem. php updated Apache's httpd.conf as expected. However, when I restarted Apache:

The requested operation has failed!

And here I thought Microsoft gave unhelpful error messages. Some time Googling later, I found this post which seemed to be much the same issue.

So I uninstalled the php msi, downloaded the same file in zip format, and extracted to the same folder (in my case, C:\PHP). Restarted Apache and there were no issues.