Well it is nonsense to me - anyone ideas where/what is causing this?
A cut from just one of the virtual host error logs (previously working php pages being called (in fact they work fine on the live server) so not a PHP coding error. No such request is made to bottom or top (.html) files - rather obviously as the virtual host directory is away on a different volume.
getting 1000's of these filling up the error log.
nothing in the access log other than the call to the main index.php page.
[Sat Oct 25 20:54:20.994842 2014] [include:error] [pid 4540:tid 1780] [client 127.0.0.1:62722] unable to include potential exec "include/bottom.html" in parsed file C:/XAMPP/apache/error/HTTP_NOT_FOUND.html.var, content type not text/*
[Sat Oct 25 20:54:20.995843 2014] [include:error] [pid 4540:tid 1724] [client 127.0.0.1:62726] unable to include potential exec "include/top.html" in parsed file C:/XAMPP/apache/error/HTTP_NOT_FOUND.html.var, content type not text/*
The files do exist in C:XAMPP/apache/error/include. The mystery is why can they not be accessed - and more importantly why are they being called in the first place? (and since when has a html file been called a "potential exec"?)
Beginning to think that the php has not been set up / installed correctly though suspicious of Apache.
This "simple" upgrade is fast becoming all consuming of time and frustration.