PHP8.3 - Can't load php_curl (Windows 11, Apache 2.4.53)

Question

I can't get PHP8.3 (Win32-vs16-x64) running under Apache 2.4.53 (win64-VS16) to load php_curl, when Apache starts this error is logged:

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'curl'
(tried: C:\\php\\php-8.3.8-Win32-vs16-x64\\ext\\curl (The specified module could not
be found),
C:\\php\\php-8.3.8-Win32-vs16-x64\\ext\\php_curl.dll (The specified procedure could not
be found))
in Unknown on line 0

PHP curl extension referenced in php.ini like this:

extension_dir = "C:\\php\\php-8.3.8-Win32-vs16-x64\\ext"
extension=curl

[curl]
curl.cainfo = "C:/php/php-8.3.8-Win32-vs16-x64/cacert.pem"

C:\php\php-8.3.8-Win32-vs16-x64\ext\php_curl.dll seems to exist at that location. My PHP folder is in the system path (executing php -v from a command prompt outputs the PHP version info). libcrypto-3-x64.dll and libssl-3-x64.dll are both in that folder.

I previously ran PHP7.3 on this machine, with curl working (although I think it may not have been straightforward to achieve that).

Any advice on how to get curl working?

Answer 1

I don't know why, but upgrading to Apache 2.4.62 Win64 seems to have fixed it.