External authentication PHP script on windows

We are migrating an ejabberd installation from Linux to windows 2003. It uses an external Postgresql database for authentication.

This script is based on

http://www.ejabberd.im/check_mysql_php

properly modified to access the postgresql database.

It worked perfectly under linux. Under windows we have created a bat file which just calls the php interpreter to execute the script and modified ejabberd.cfg accordingly:

c:\xampp\php\php.exe c:\ejabberd\ejabberd_auth.php

Watching the logs (event viewer in windows) we see it correctly receives the parameters, connects to the database and returns. However, this return value never reaches ejabberd and the http-bind service answers with a timeout (as seen in the ejabberd logs).

We have tested this with 2.0.5 and 2.1.0-beta2 with the same results.

Any ideas? :) thanks