Installing Xdebug on Windows and PhpStorm

There is a catch when installing Xdebug on windows: You need to set the full path of the extension directive in the php.ini, since the default directory is only used for non-zend extensions. Also don’t forget to use quotes.

;used only for 'normal' extensions
extension_dir = "C:Program Files (x86)PHPext"

;still necessary to use full path
zend_extension = "C:Program Files (x86)PHPextphp_xdebug.dll"

;won't work
;zend_extension = php_xdebug.dll

To make Xdebug work in PhpStorm you also need to enable remote debugging:

xdebug.remote_enable = 1