Hi,
According to http://www.apachefriends.org/en/faq-xampp-windows.html, "There are three "php.ini""", and "\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini is the correct one". This isn't accurate anymore (at least, in XAMPP for Windows Version 1.7.1). There's only one copy of php.ini now -- in [xampp install dir]/php. Would somebody please update the documentation?