...I think I should not alter settings for IPV6 when not really necessary...
Apache does not parse IPv6
::1 localhost only the IPv4
127.0.0.1 localhost that is why using the local loop back IP address
127.0.0.1 will work over using just the
localhost name - so it is safe to either comment out the IPv6 localhost reference line or even to delete the line in total then Apache will use IPv4 as usual.
Using either of the above methods that work for you to fix the access issue is fine, except in other cases when localhost is specified in a script, configuration file or some other code that Apache has to deal with will the IPv6 localhost issue perhaps rear it's ugly head again.
It seems that Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and possibly Windows XP SP2 have this IPv6
::1 localhost line placed in the
HOSTS file by default and in most, if not all, cases it is of no use whatsoever and can and has caused many issues with Apache that have resulted in many posts for a solution in these and many other server related forums on the Internet.
**Allowing access to all is a little crazy sounding even for a Dev box. Definitely DO NOT do that.**
Up to this latest 1.7 version of XAMPP this
Allow from all has been the norm and so it has consequently been changed to be somewhat more secure and allow access only from the PC that XAMPP is installed on and is the reason for all these localhost (127.0.0.1) issues being raised.
The obvious conclusion to this change, one can assume, is that using localhost instead of 127.0.0.1, which by the way 127.0.0.1 is used in most if not all of the security related php files in the
.\xampp\security\htdocs folder, was perhaps not extensively tested during beta in relation to more recent Windows OS's inclusion of the IPv6 entry in the HOSTS file - but keep in mind that the IPv6 issue may not be the only reason for this 403 access problem to be raised as I believe that in some other posts in the non English forums the commenting out of the IPv6 line had no effect on this issue at all and so the above solution to replace with 127.0.0.1 was the only solution anyway.