Samual wrote:... a message comes up stating 'Port 80 or 443 (SSL) already in use! ...
Did you find out what is using those ports that XAMPP needs to have exclusive access to?
Right click on
xampp-portcheck.exe in the xampp installation directory and select to 'Run as Administrator' but make sure you are logged in to Vista as an administrator and before trying to start any of the XAMPP modules.
Usually
IIS (MS Internet Information Server - Windows web server),
Skype, and
MySpaceIM are known to use these ports and it would require you to configure any of those programs that are using the XAMPP ports to use other ports that are available to them.
(
It is also possible to configure XAMPP to use other ports but for ease of using the XAMPP server it would be best if you configured the other port users)
For the MySQL error, don't use the
Admin... button in the Control Panel as winmysqladmin is deprecated. Use
phpMyAdmin instead accessible from the Welcome Page menu at
http://localhost when you have installed and have XAMPP working.
BTW if you are constantly reinstalling XAMPP by overwriting the previous xampp installation directory then you will have problems.
Each time, you must uninstall properly, by stopping any XAMPP modules and running services, including the Control Panel, then run the uninstall command, then check and make sure the previous attempted installed xampp directory is deleted.
Then you can try installing again to a root directory of a drive or partition,
C:\ for example - not to a directory with a space in the name,
C:\Program Files for example as this has known permission issues in Vista.
This link has some more advanced fixes that might also be of use:
http://community.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopi ... 772#113772