EDIT: Am doing a lot of cURL calls inside a PHP file, around 20-40, causing the timeout. The PHP file is waiting for the cURLs and all that.
I got this error while doing some stuff:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in C:\xampp\htdocs\kapow\includes\funcs.php in line 53
general form:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of <max_execution_time> seconds excedeed in C:\<apache server folder>\htdocs\<project folder>\..\<php file> in line <line from php file>
So in any case you’d encounter the same (and usual) “maximum execution time” server load error, here’s what you have to do:
Open php.ini and locate variable max_execution_time. Setting it to 5minutes will do the trick. It’s safest to allot more time.
max_execution_time = 300 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
max_input_time = 300 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data
If you are using XAMPP, change the following php.ini files:
C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini
C:\xampp\php\php4\php4.ini
C:\xampp\php\php4\php.ini
C:\xampp\php\php.ini
And of course, don’t forget to restart your Apache server.
Hope that helps. 
