Mohamed Sharaf
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Enable the intl extension in XAMPP (and fix the missing ICU DLL error)

Turn on PHP’s intl extension on Windows and get past the “icuuc*.dll is missing” error.

· 1 min read

From the archive: first published on mohamedsharaf.net in November 2012. Rewritten and checked in 2026; some details may be out of date.

Many frameworks need PHP’s intl extension. In XAMPP on Windows it ships but is switched off.

  1. Open xampp\php\php.ini.
  2. Find ;extension=intl (on older PHP: ;extension=php_intl.dll) and remove the semicolon.
  3. Optionally, in the [intl] section, set intl.default_locale = en_US.
  4. Restart Apache from the XAMPP control panel.

If Apache then complains that icuuc*.dll is missing, Windows can’t find the ICU libraries that intl depends on. They are in the xampp\php folder: add that folder to the system PATH (or, the old quick fix, copy the icu*.dll files into xampp\apache\bin) and restart Apache.

Check that it worked with php -m; intl should be in the list.

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