No connection could be made - php

Question

No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.
Here is my code.
//$db = 'htdocs\as4.mdb';
//$conn = new COM('ADODB.Connection');
mysql_connect('htdocs\as4.mdb');
mysql_select_db('vendor');
$search = $_POST['search'];
$sql = "SELECT * FROM vendor WHERE vendorName like '%search%' OR
address like '%search%' or
city like '%search%' or
provState like '%search%' or
country like '%search%'";
$result = mysql_query($sql, $conn) or die (mysql_error());
$number = mysql_num_rows($result);
// <h3>$number of results found search for "$search"</h3>
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$vendorName = $row['vendorName'];
$address = $row['address'];
$city = $row['city'];
$provState = $row['provState'];
$country = $row['country'];
}
?>
I'm trying to connect to the database and through a search textbox find a certain keyword and display results with anything that has to do with the key word, for example if I type in Canada I would like to see the results of all the people in Canada. I tried to do it through new COM('ADODB.Connection') as you can see it commented out, but couldn't figure out exactly how.
What if I wanted to use something like this to search the database?
$db = 'htdocs\database\database.mdb';
$sql = "SELECT * FROM Vendor";
//to make this work, you need to add
//extension=php_com_dotnet.dll
//to your php.ini file. Put it with the other
//extension=
//values towards the bottom of the file (around line number 1050)
$conn = new COM('ADODB.Connection');
if(!$conn)
{
echo "Database unreachable";
exit();
}
else
{
echo "Success!<hr />";
try
{
$conn -> Open("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; Data Source=$db");
$rs = $conn->Execute($sql);
}
catch(Exception $e)
{
echo 'Caught exception: ', $e->getMessage(), "<br />";
exit();
}
while(!$rs->EOF)
{
For($i = 0; $i < ($rs->Fields->Count); $i++)
{
echo $rs->Fields[$i]->Value;
echo " ";
}
echo "<br />";
$rs->MoveNext();
}