I made notes of some of the potential stumbling blocks when installing xampp, hope it is useful to somebody.
Before starting Apache as a service first quite skype if you have it running (this uses port 80). Once Apache has started re-start skype and it will search for an alternative available port.
To check what services are running you can use:
run –> services.msc
If a service won’t start right click on the service and select properties. This will show you the executable path, check it is correct. The path for the mysql service is stored in windows.my.ini. If changing this does not work (you may have a stray my.ini file somewhere from a previous installation??) you can start the mysql service manually via the command prompt entering the correct path:
c:\xampp\mysql\bin\myqld.exe –console
If you are having problems starting apache check the log files:
xampp\apache\logs\
Use the command window to start apache and get additional info on error:
run cmd.exe
cd c:\xampp
type apache_start.bat
Adding a virtual host:
** update **
I got into a mess on a subsequent re-installation of xampp. Your best best is to follow the guides on this page.
one thing worth noting that isn’t covered in the guide is that if the path to the document root includes spaces put the path inside quotes.
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Enable mod rewrite
1. Open httpd.conf (C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd-conf)
2. Scroll down to around line 118 and look for the line #LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so. Remove the # from the beginning of the line.
3. Save the change to the file, and restart XAMPP.
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