Lots of pages not rendering properly, just displaying code

[JustinMoser]

Hi,
I have used Xampp lite for a while now. About a year ago, something strange happened with the machine that xampp (functioning fine and working fine up until this point) was installed on. Basically, the problem now persists no matter how many times i uninstall and re install Xampp, but most of the pages in for example "http://localhost" when setting up databases, are not displaying correctly; this includes lots of random code just sitting on the page as if it hasnt executed properly and parts of pages not displaying at all. The biggest problem is that when wordpress is installed locally to the xampp>htdocs directory, when i go to login to the wordpress in a browser (after setting it up) the main part of the wordpress home screen doesnt appear (just blank white), and only a small part of the sidebar (posts, pages, setting etc) appears, followed by lots of code that should be rendering below it. This has been driving me absolutley crazy for about a year, and it would be REALLY useful to be able to start testing my wordpress work locally again. So thanks in advance to anyone who can help solve this problem or provide any information on the problem

Thanks

Justin

[MC10]

A few questions:

1. Are you using short open tags? (<? ?> instead of <?php ?>)
2. Are Apache and MySQL both running?

[JustinMoser]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply, I havent written any code yet! its just the standard install of xampp where ive encountered this problem, its not my own pages that Ive created, its the xampp localhost setup screens, the phpmyadmin screens, EVERYTHING! no pages display correctly! none of the pages are styled properly, and in many cases parts of the pages are missing, and in the place of the content is the code instead! baffling! And yeah Apache and MySQL are both running

Justin