Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Problems with the Windows version of XAMPP, questions, comments, and anything related.

Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby jhsachs » 16. June 2011 23:05

I'm trying to build a PHP development environment on a Windows 7 computer. I've done this a few times under Windows XP, but I'm not an expert; when something goes wrong I often have difficulty figuring out what.

I tried this first with separately installed components, because that's what I did in the past. When I couldn't get it to work I tried installing XAMPP 1.7.4, believing that I would have an easier time if I had fewer parts to fit together. So far, though, no joy.

Here's what I see:

There is no icon for Apache in the system tray.

When I start the XAMPP Control Panel it opens a box which says:

XAMPP Component Status Check failure [3].
Current directory: (the directory in which I installed XAMPP)
Run this program only from your XAMPP root directory.

When I click OK this box closes and XAMPP opens. It shows that MySQL is running but Apache is not. When I click the Apache "Start" button the status box says:

Busy...
Apache service started

...but the "Running" text visible next to "MySQL" never appears next to "Apache," and the Apache "Start" button never changes to "Stop."

The Task Manager never shows Apache running. Nor does the Services applet.

Apache's "logs" directory is empty.

When I open the URL "localhost" I get a page that says "It works!" Something is serving pages from somewhere, but I don't know what or where. I don't see anything in the Task Manager or the Services applet that looks like an HTTP server, and so far I haven't found an index.html file anywhere on the disk that changes the appearance of the "It works!" page when changed.

I've seen conflicting and confusing information about whether XAMPP supports WindoWs 7 (as a 64-bit system) at all. That might be the problem... or it might not.

Where do I start with this?
jhsachs
 
Posts: 10
Joined: 16. June 2011 22:53

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby mightysaviour0826 » 16. June 2011 23:44

Excuse me for posting here but i was looking on the forum for an answer to my own problem and this persons problem is close to my own same inviroment windows 7. Everything was working Ok except on phpMyadmin I has a lot of missing extensions and so i was about fixing them up, or at least trying to.
I am very new to this end of things and but have a little php expirence. On downloading apache 2.2.19 it did not work and that turned out to be the php installers version of the httpd config was not right. I unistalled the old version and installed the new version. as it would not do it while the old version was installed.
Now here is the rub, type in localhost (IT WORKS!) go to an extension that is html and it displays go to an extension that is php and it gives me a prompt at the bottom of any browser saying do you want to open this file and it opens it in a text editor. I have gone to fire walls and even did a system recovery after totally losing the plot and got the older version but with the new problem still there.

I did notice on the install error locating server settings and think it had to do with the port on my computer 80 0.00.0000 or something like that will try again as have forgoten exact message but this is turning into a merry go round and it ain't merry any more thanks if you can help him and me thankyou sorry did not know exactly how to make my own post yet
mightysaviour0826
 
Posts: 1
Joined: 16. June 2011 23:02

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby Sharley » 17. June 2011 00:30

jhsachs wrote:Where do I start with this?
First, if you can, make sure that all your previous attempts at installing those individual server components are well and truly uninstalled and that any of their ini or conf files are deleted - I can't help with that as only you know where your attempted installs were created and hoe you removed them especially any that were installed as a Windows Service which may leave residue in the Registry.

Read this post for an alternative installation method and a link to download the newer version 3 XAMPP Control Panel:
viewtopic.php?p=181170#p181170

The above post and included instructions should see you moving forward, if all goes according to plan. :)


@mightysaviour0826
You should start a new topic as your issues, although similar, may not be the same as the OP, but you could try the solution offered above and see if it also allows you to move on.
User avatar
Sharley
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3316
Joined: 03. October 2008 05:10
Location: Yeppoon, Australia Time Zone: GMT/UTC+10
Operating System: Win 7 Pro 32bit/XP Pro SP3

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby jhsachs » 17. June 2011 02:27

I followed your suggestion and initially got the same problem as before. I moved the XAMPP root directory from C:\Program Files (x86) to C:\, per the instructions, and then it worked.

I now suspect that not installing XAMPP in the root was the problem all along.

I'm not happy about having to do this, because it violates Windows standard practice, but it's a secondary problem that I can try to solve later. First I'm going to build the rest of my development environment.

Thank you for injecting some new information into the situation and helping to resolve the problem.

I've encountered one further problem that concerns me. It's not exactly a XAMPP problem, but it seems to have ridden in on the XAMPP animal, so perhaps you can shed some light on it.

I've assigned passwords to both of the users in the predefined MySQL tablespace, but the version of phpMyAdmin that came with XAMPP is not prompting me for a password. It seems to giving me unrestricted access without any password -- which, of course, subverts whatever protection scheme I establish. Do you (does anyone) know why it's doing that, and how to make it stop?
Last edited by jhsachs on 17. June 2011 02:53, edited 1 time in total.
jhsachs
 
Posts: 10
Joined: 16. June 2011 22:53

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby Sharley » 17. June 2011 02:48

jhsachs wrote:I'm not happy about having to do this, because it violates Windows standard practice
If your worried about violating any Windows standards then why do you insist on using a *nix based server suite that does not do well with spaces and special characters in file or folder names and which is very much case sensitive?
All these things will be a future headache to you if you continue using XAMPP with the misconception about breaking Windows standards.

In my opinion, you will be much better suited to using the Win7 built in Micro$haft's server suite World Wide Publishing or IIS (Internet Information Server) as it used to be named or what ever it will be named tomorrow, (but naming conventions with M$ can change at a whim of the software house developers if it means another version and more bulk $$$ to boost their already bloated bottom line).
User avatar
Sharley
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3316
Joined: 03. October 2008 05:10
Location: Yeppoon, Australia Time Zone: GMT/UTC+10
Operating System: Win 7 Pro 32bit/XP Pro SP3

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby Sharley » 17. June 2011 03:05

jhsachs wrote:I've assigned passwords to both of the users in the predefined MySQL tablespace

Read this file \xampp\readme_en.txt file especially the section A matter of security (A MUST READ!).


BTW for reasons stated in item C in the bellow linked topic it would have been more prudent to have created another topic for your unrelated password issue:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=47241
User avatar
Sharley
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3316
Joined: 03. October 2008 05:10
Location: Yeppoon, Australia Time Zone: GMT/UTC+10
Operating System: Win 7 Pro 32bit/XP Pro SP3

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby jhsachs » 17. June 2011 06:06

Thank you for the reference to \xampp\readme_en.txt, but it's not clear what that means. I assumed you were referring informally to the URL http://www.apachefriends.org/xampp/readme_en.txt, but there is no such page.

I'll open another topic for my phpMyAdmin question. Whether to do that or not is really a question of forum style; I've been corrected for doing the opposite in other places. But it certainly makes sense to conform to the customs of the forum one is visiting, as long as one can keep them straight.

As for the "why?..." question, it seem quite strained to me. I use Apache because it makes mty development environment consistent with my clients' production environments. I strongly prefer to store programs in the standard program directory because that's where anyone who works with Windows expects to find them, and conforming to expectations reduces the risk of misunderstanding or accident. Both choices make my life easier, and my work more effective. I see no inconsistency between them.

By the way, Apache has no trouble at all with spaces in pathnames. It appears that XAMPP does, though.
jhsachs
 
Posts: 10
Joined: 16. June 2011 22:53

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby Nobbie » 17. June 2011 12:35

jhsachs wrote:By the way, Apache has no trouble at all with spaces in pathnames


But Apache has trouble with the special character '(' and ')' in pathnames. You will receive strange error message when trying to activate fully SSL support, when the installation directory contains a string like '(x86)'. This collides with a syntax definition for a cache size (or similar), i do not remember exactly what it was.

These pathnames are not valid in *nix environments.

P.S.: See http://arfore.com/2009/08/24/sslsession ... r-windows/
Nobbie
 
Posts: 13165
Joined: 09. March 2008 13:04

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby JonB » 17. June 2011 14:47

These remonstrations about not using spaces or special characters are completely valid.

Just about everything that goes into XAMPP - Apache, Perl, PHP, MySQL and most of the rest - ALL began life as *nix projects and to this day their source code is built first on Unix derived OS's - then compilations are made that are adapted to Windows. Thus - there are many many bad things waiting to happen to you if you use folders or file-names that don't conform to Unix standards. its not so hard to do and it won't break your system.

A. no spaces or special characters (spaces will cause problems with many web-apps and browsers, and you will get mangled URLS)
B. don't start foldernames with numerals (this is a programmatic problem, not a Unix issue)
C. use underscores or dashes to deal with readability (dashes are better for web-apps, as links are generally underlined - so an underscore is indistinguishable from a space - see above A.)
D. make the 'native version of all file and folder names strictly lowercase. No Leading Caps or CamelCase. This will avoid the problem of portability. Unix derived OS's filesystems are case-sensitive, the Windows NTFS filesystem is not case-sensitive.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linuxunix- ... ory-names/

Note the comment about 'escaping' - you want to avoid having to escape characters wherever possible in your code. Escaping is often necessary to construct code (like in regular expressions), but it shouldn't be part of your filesystem routines or naming conventions.

If you want your code to run right, follow those rules.

Good Luck
:)



ysf
User avatar
JonB
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3210
Joined: 12. April 2010 16:41
Location: Land of the Blazing Sun
Operating System: Windows XP/7 - Fedora 15 1.7.7

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby jhsachs » 17. June 2011 15:40

I realized that the string with backslashes was supposed to be a pathname of a file relative to the root of an unspecified drive. I found the file and read it:
...XAMPP is not meant for production use but only for developers in a development environment... The MySQL administrator (root) has no password.


As for how it makes me feel... imagine that you have just taken delivery of a new sports car. You see that it has no doors. When you report this to the dealer, he points you to a page in the owner's manual which explains that because sports cars are designed for recreation the doors have been omitted to improve the driving experience.

First, no reason can justify this omission. Second, the reason given doesn't even make sense.

Distributing the system without password protection makes sense. If the user actually has no need for security beyond that provided by the user password, she can leave it that way. If not, she'll add password protection before she does anything else... and once she does, no application should circumvent it!

No application should be able to circumvent password protection. I'll pursue this in another topic, as you suggested.
jhsachs
 
Posts: 10
Joined: 16. June 2011 22:53

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby JonB » 17. June 2011 21:10

Of course, one should also get driving lessons before purchasing a car. WAIT - this car was free, wasn't it???

You would still need driving lessons...

:shock:
User avatar
JonB
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3210
Joined: 12. April 2010 16:41
Location: Land of the Blazing Sun
Operating System: Windows XP/7 - Fedora 15 1.7.7

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby Sharley » 18. June 2011 01:55

jhsachs wrote:
...XAMPP is not meant for production use but only for developers in a development environment... The MySQL administrator (root) has no password.
...but then, if you had bothered to continue reading that section I pointed out to you, it goes on to tell you how to simply set the password for super user root for MySQL and phpMyAdmin, which would have eliminated some of your other needless issues with doing things incorrectly with MySQL and phpMyAdmin.

No application in XAMPP circumvents passwords in a default installation - do take some time out to read some of the comments in the configuration files found in the \xampp\apache\conf folder and the extra folder, they really do give some insight as to how XAMPP ticks - you will see in the httpd-xampp.conf file that phpmyadmin is Aliased for security as other security issues are covered in depth in this file.

It really does pay to read instructions first before attempting all your needless time wasting tweaking and if you really do want to reinvent the wheel then first you have to know how it originally was invented and for what purpose.

As a new XAMPP user, apart from the readme-en.txt file you should also read these pages:
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/faq-xampp-windows.html
There is also some time saving advise for new XAMPP users in this forum Announcement:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=32670

All of which should make things much clearer for you to understand how the very knowledgeable and experienced developers of XAMPP have put together a suite of server applications for your ease and benefit to develop your web experience.
User avatar
Sharley
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3316
Joined: 03. October 2008 05:10
Location: Yeppoon, Australia Time Zone: GMT/UTC+10
Operating System: Win 7 Pro 32bit/XP Pro SP3

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby jhsachs » 18. June 2011 03:00

Sharley, I'm not going to pursue this further, but I'll leave you with some advice. You can use it or ignore it as you choose.

Figure out what you're angry about and take steps to resolve it.

Dumping your feelings on the people you're ostensibly trying to help won't help.
jhsachs
 
Posts: 10
Joined: 16. June 2011 22:53

Re: Difficulty making XAMPP work in Windows 7

Postby Sharley » 18. June 2011 03:43

No where in my posts do I express anger and once again you are true to form and hopelessly wrong.

On the contrary I find your posts quite entertainingly hilarious and have never had such a good laugh in years.

If you can't get a simple suite of apps contained in XAMPP to work 'out of the box' that millions have done successfully in the past and will continue to do in the future, then the reasons you failed to install the stand alone components are blatantly obvious.


This is also my last help, comment and opinion on your total ineptitude and, for what it is worth, I see yet another potential vulnerable zombie server in the making that will be ready for use for those seeking to exploit it.
User avatar
Sharley
AF Moderator
 
Posts: 3316
Joined: 03. October 2008 05:10
Location: Yeppoon, Australia Time Zone: GMT/UTC+10
Operating System: Win 7 Pro 32bit/XP Pro SP3


Return to XAMPP for Windows

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 148 guests