Well I have gotten my XAMPP installation running finally, not super easy as it was difficult to get it past blocked ports and old installations but it's running now.
What is weird though is that in C:/ I have a folder 'xampp' with all my stuff in it, and then within that there is another xampp folder with the exact same stuff. I tried to delete this extra one but it would not let me, and it using the htdocs folder in that one. Problem is also complicated because trying to access any file other than the XAMPP splash page is giving me a "Server Error".
Any ideas or solutions?