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Re: Really stuck

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 12:06 pm
by califdon
It's httpd.conf. The "d" at the end of the name is an indicator that it is a background process, known as "daemons" in Unix/Linux, and the terminology has continued in Windows.

You can tell if Apache is running or not by looking in Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del once--careful, twice will shut down your computer) under Processes. If Apache is running, you will find several processes named httpd.exe. Also, I believe you can see its status by running services.msc. Similarly, you can check whether the MySQL server is running, its name is myqld.exe, again the "d" indicates that it is a "daemon" process running in the background, waiting for requests.

But in any case, you're still left with the problem that you started with--evidently you have IIS running, and if it's using port 80, which it probably is, Apache won't be able to use that port. You have to either configure Apache to use a different port, such as 8080 (the usual alternate)--but then every time you want to use Apache you will have to add ":8080" at the end of every URL--ughh!--or disable IIS. The latter seems by far the best plan. Unfortunately, I have never used Vista and can't offer much help with how to uninstall, disable, or at least stop the IIS background server process. You may find help on that by searching Google for something like 'iis disable vista'.

[Edit: I should think you could search either Task Manager or services.msc for the IIS server; if it is running, you can stop it from either of those utilities, then start Apache (httpd). But you would have to do it every time you boot up, which sucks. But at least you could prove that Apache is working. Notice that IIS must be disabled before you can start Apache, since if port 80 is in use, Apache probably won't start. Also, be sure that you have a file named index.html in the Document Root for Apache (the installation normally puts a temporary Welcome page there, similar to the IIS 7 welcome page you have been viewing in the IIS Document Root). Find the configuration file for Apache: httpd.conf. I think the standard location for this file in a WAMP installation is something like C:\wamp\bin\Apache\Apache2.17.2\conf. It's a long text file you can open in Notepad or something, and WAY down (you can do a search) you will find a line something like:
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www/"
That's where Apache is told where all the HTML and script files are.]

Re: Really stuck

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 6:56 am
by Hobittual
Thanks for your help. I eventually realised that while I had done everything I had been advised to do, it does help if you turn WAMP on, suddenly everything works.
Very grateful.
Cheers
Hob

Re: Really stuck

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:17 pm
by califdon
Hobittual wrote:Thanks for your help. I eventually realised that while I had done everything I had been advised to do, it does help if you turn WAMP on, suddenly everything works.
Very grateful.
Cheers
Hob
Ahhh, that would explain it. :wink: Glad you're up and running now.

Re: Really stuck

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 1:49 pm
by Doug G
Get process explorer from sysinternals.com, it's like task manager on steroids. With that you can surely verify that any of the server processes are or are not running.

It sounds to me like you should remove everything you've tried so far, re-install and start over. Make sure you only have a single firewall running on your computer, often people get multiple security programs and have more than one firewall, which makes opening ports a real adventure. Then check each of the wamp services before making any modifications or changes.