So last night the install went fine after I changed the port (if you remember that's where I left off).   Thought I was good.   Nope, today went to my hello world only to find a 404 message.  

I opened my XXAMP control panel and saw Apache wasn't running, weird.   Clicked 'Start' and nothing happened.   Weirder.   Opened up the admin 'Services' tool to start Apache from there - error when trying to start.   Okay, well that's something at least.   Look in event viewer - can't bind to port 443 (I was hoping to find the error in the apache log file so I wouldn't have to use that pesky GUI based tool, but I guess there's config file I don't have set up correctly somewhere because it's log file was blank).   Okay, no biggie, let me just change the SSL port like I did for port 80.

So now Apache starts.   I decide I don't like the port I'm using for non HTTP, stop the service and change the config.   But now I'm getting errors saying that the new SSL port can't be bound too - WTF?. So apparently Apache is sticky and doesn't like you changing things without rebooting.  After a reboot I was good (and yes the apache services and everything using it was stopped!  Of course I checked that first).   So today, I have Apache officially running on my machine (along with MySQL) and after a reboot everything seems okay.

One other thing, I assume you realize this, but just to point out anyway and have some fun: I had to be a real programmer to do this - no wimpy GUI's for me - I went pseudo hard-core and used Notepad for this!   Woohoo - I rock!   I can use a basic text editor to configure something in a couple of buried files over the course of 20 minutes (15 minutes was searching for the darn things) that would've taken me 5 minutes in in the IIS GUI admin tool - take that Microsoft and your dumbed down GUI's!

In all seriousness though, once I got through this hassle with the config files (for this round) things have been pretty smooth.  The start page for XXAMP notifies you what you don't have secured by default (funny when Microsoft does that they're being irresponsible because they're giving the users an insecure system, but then when they lock down Vista their being big brother).   The start page goes on to gives you some instructions/help on fixing those items which was I though was pretty cool; in fact one just is a 'take me to the Wizard' type of thing which I have to admit is better than when Microsoft product pop-open a help file to step you through things that they could've easily created a wizard for.  Although on one particular item I got quite the chuckle out of:

[quote]

  • For FileZilla FTP und Mercury Mail, you must fix all security problems by yourself! Sorry.

 [/quote]

Could you imagine this popping up when you were configuring Exchange Server?   Now that would be hoot!   But hey, it was free, I can't complain right?  And in fairness it does take a considerable amount of effort to put together such a large package (and do it for free) and I know the guys/gals who worked on this probably in reality could run circles around me on a level playing field; I'm just poking fun.