plimpton

For any new work, especially when working with SQL Server 2k8 you should be using the new sqlsrv driver instead of the community mssql driver. You can find out more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlphp/

Another option would be to use the sqlsrv driver available directly from microsoft: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlphp/

Sounds like you should be using the threadsafe (ts) version of the sqlsrv file since you're running it under apache

What is the name of your server you are connecting to? "(local)\SQLEXPRESS" works for me using the sqlsrv driver (not mssql)

You can try to use the new sqlsrv driver created by microsoft and get support from them: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlphp/

you'll need to post more of the code, you didn't show how those variables you use are populated

Generally you only store the path to the images in the database but you can create a binary column to put the data in, but that's much harder and slower to actually have the image data in the database