Apache is not running from XAMPP Control Panel ( Error: Apache shutdown unexpectedly. This may be due to a blocked port)

Question

I have installed XAMPP (xampp-win32-1.8.2-0-VC9-installer.exe) on Windows 7 successfully. But unfortunately, the following error was found during running Apache from XAMPP Control Panel:

5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    Error: Apache shutdown unexpectedly.
5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    This may be due to a blocked port, missing dependencies, 
5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    improper privileges, a crash, or a shutdown by another method.
5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    Press the Logs button to view error logs and check
5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    the Windows Event Viewer for more clues
5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    If you need more help, copy and post this
5:38:38 PM  [Apache]    entire log window on the forums

Answer 1

There are many possible answers for this problem. The most common and most likely is that you're running another program which is blocking port 80 or 443. If you've installed Skype, then you've found your problem! Change apache's port settings to 81 and apache will work. There's a good tutorial on that To check this you can open up your command line by clicking the start menu, and typing 'cmd', and enter the command

    netstat -nab

this wil return a list of programs that will vaguely resemble this pattern

    [someprogram.exe]
    UDP     [fe80::numbers:numbers:numbers:numbers%numbers]:portnumber

You need to find a line (or lines) ending in :80 and terminate them in order to start apache. If there is no line ending in :80, there are more things you can do.

First, navigate to xampp's directory (default is c:\xampp) and double click apache_start.bat. This will open up a comand line and return more detailed errors about why apache can't run. Mostly, be looking for syntax errors that you could've created by editing your httpd.conf, or httpd-ssl.conf files. This is very easy to do if you've edited it and are a new user.

If still this fails, your last hope is to check the apache error log by clicking on the logs tab in apache's row in the xampp control panel and clicking error log.

If none of this works, don't give up! You got this!

Edit: If you change the port of apache, you will also have to go into httpd.conf (located in xampp/apache/conf) and near line 184, replace

ServerName localhost:80

with

ServerName localhost:81

It is also possible to specify port 81 in the url of your localhost, i.e.

localhost:81/my_project.php