I'm installing a set of PHP scripts that require email confirmation. In the installation, the script asks for the Sendmail Path. Sendmail is a standard Unix utility, but how do you do this on an XP machine?
This is a real problem with running scripts written for *nix systems on Windows XP. Sendmail is the normal alias for the mail server on a unix box. This is because sendmail was the first really big mail server. Now, many people use other programs. As far as I know, there is no equivalent for windows . . . unless you install cygwin and sendmail or another mail server there. Then you can include the sendmail path, which will work as long as cygwin is running. Even installing Mercury32 is problematic because it seems to be hard to get it to work from the command line -- even if you change the name to sendmail. The only way I have been able to solve this problem is to hack the scripts to change the way email is sent. This means getting the script to contact your ISP's mail server to send the mail. Unfortunately, I do not have sample php code to show you because I run my php scripts on Linux boxes.
What do these scripts use to send emails? Dont they use the mail() function? If they really directly use sendmail, then - as clancey said - your only option is to rewrite them to use mail() (or PHPMailer for example) or to find a sendmail compatible application for Windows.
I remember a few years ago I found a Windows version of sendmail (can't remember the name ), it ran really well. I ultimately removed it because my Windows machine at home was purely for development and the mail server got almost no use. If you search for "windows sendmail" you'll find a bunch of Win32 sendmail programs.