I also had the same problem, and found that I did not need to change to Linux. Try the following, it worked for me and I am brand new to this.
1. When installing, it reports that
“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL which is required for WordPress.”
Solution: open wp-setting.php, comment the following lines:
//if ( !extension_loaded(’mysql’) )
// die( ‘Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL which is required for WordPress.’ );
Hope this helps.