I had wondered why I was unable to restart Apache without restarting my computer.
I ran xampp-portcheck.exe and found that C:\Program Files\JungleDisk\junglediskmonitor.exe was using port 80.
JungleDisk is a connector tool for Amazon Web Services S3 (Simple Storage Solution) that I use for remote backup.
Apache would load fine on restart because it would bind to 0.0.0.0:80 before junglediskmonitor was loaded but if I shutdown Apache either via the XAMPP control panel or using apache_stop.bat junglediskmonitor.exe would bind to port 80 and I would no longer be able to restart it.
I found the recommended workaround at the JungleDisk forums but there is no permanent fix as of yet.
What I ended up doing was changing the httpd.conf to bind to 127.0.0.1:80 instead of just to any IP (0.0.0.0). This seems to have taken care of it. That being said, I don't know what you would need to do if you need remote access to the server.
Any suggestions welcome.
Cheers,
Jay