phpMyAdmin mbstring error

Question

Whenever I try to enter my phpMyAdmin, it gives me this error:

The mbstring extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration.

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Answer 1

I recently updated from PHP 5.4.44 to PHP 5.6.12 on my Windows 8.1 OS and got this phpMyAdmin missing mbstring error message.

After trying the above suggestions, none of which worked for me, I discovered version 5.4.44 placed the DLL extensions in the PHP root directory whereas version 5.6.12 placed them in the PHP\ext subdirectory.
All very fine except unfortunately someone forgot to change the php.ini accordingly. So two possible solutions:

1. Copy the DLL extensions from the ext sub-directory into the PHP root directory, or
2. Edit the php.ini file to call all the DLL extensions from the ext sub-directory.

I chose the easier first and phpMyAdmin now works fine.