Why won't xampp apache server load localhost on any port when control panel says it's running?

Question

I just downloaded the most recent copy of xampp. I have been using this for some time. However, today I cannot get anything to load from localhost. The XAMPP control panel says it is running. I have seen when another application has port 80 and I cannot get it to start. It will report busy. That's not happening though.

I did install ruby on rails last night. I was following some online training with Lynda.com. That is supposed to use Webbrick server on port 3000. That doesn't work anyway.
So, can anyone suggest what I should do? Thanks, Bruce

Answer 1

Did battle for 2 hours this am. Did a clean install of XAMPP on my Windows7 computer and walked through a ruby install. Apache would not start. I believe when I copied the code to add in httpd.conf into notepad++, I got slanting quotes. When I edited the quotes, they went back in as straight up and down. That was my stupid problem, just saying.

Details:

I ran the apache_start.bat file to see what was going on. I kept getting the error that line 520 which had to do with documentroot, was not a directory. I put ..htdocs/project01/public, which existed.

I thought maybe the permissions were wrong. Spent an hour in DOS (remember the attrib command), the changed UAC and still got the same error. Then I noticed that one of the quotes in the Ruby section at the bottom was slanted and the other was straight. When I deleted that and added another quote, it appeared straight up and down.

Used the bat file to start apache. Then it gave me an error on line 521 the Directory. Changed the quote on that and apache started. And I got the opening html page in Ruby.

I suspect if I had sudo or used the Windows Notepad editor and made sure I saved it as a MS-DOS text file, all would have been fine. Copying and pasting caused my issue.