I have noticed that using is_file on windows servers (mainly for development) to use a full path c:\ doesn't always work.
I have had to use
C:/foldertowww/site/file.ext
so I preform an str_replace('\\', '/', $path)
Sometimes I have had the \ instead of / work. (this is using apache2 on XP)
but for sure you cannot have mixed separators.