Installing Apache on Windows XP With Skype

Warning - geeky post.

I had been putting off setting up an apache test server (Apache 2.2 with PHP 5.5) here in the “lab” until this week and allowed about 30 minutes to set it up. Two hours later I was still mucking about.

The Apache service kept colliding with another service on Port 80 - okay, freak out time. What could be running on port 80 on my machine…. After scouring to be sure that IIS was completely and totally GONE, scanning my httpd.conf and php.ini files until my head hurt, I finally got some wisdom and looked at the event log to find that SKYPE (of all things) is answering port 80. Whew… Nasty little option there, obviously meant to give those with laptops a way of bypassing hard-core firewalls when using Skype on the go.

With Skype running, Apache cannot start. The fix is to go in and un-check the “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections” box on the connections tab. Restart Apache and you’re good.

What made this so tricky is that it matters what order you load things up in. Whichever service binds to port 80 first gets to keep it, and neither one seem to do a good job of alerting you of problems.

del.icio.us Digg it ma.gnolia Netscape reddit StumbleUpon Yahoo MyWeb

Leave a Reply