Installation on Unix By default the MySQL database extensions are configured to use MySQL Client Library. In order to use the MySQL Native Driver, PHP needs to be built specifying that the MySQL database extensions are compiled with MySQL Native Driver support. This is done through configuration options prior to building the PHP source code. For example, to build the MySQL extension, mysqli and PDO MYSQL using the MySQL Native Driver, the following command would be given: ./configure --with-mysql=mysqlnd \ --with-mysqli=mysqlnd \ --with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd \ [other options] Installation on Windows In the official PHP distributions from 5.3 onwards, MySQL Native Driver is enabled by default, so no additional configuration is required to use it. All MySQL database extensions will use MySQL Native Driver in this case.