Apache Friends Support Forum

Hi, I've had a major prob and lost all my xampp files and php folders. So am starting from scratch.
I've reinstalled xampp 1.8 and using the control panel, Apache and Mysql appear to work. However
they do not appear in" Services" and the tick boxes in the xampp control panel are blank and I cannot tick them.
Xampp and PhpMyAdmin appear in the Firefox browser but cannot get my test page to work (404 error)
Can any one point in the right direction?

Read the startup messages in the control panel. It will explain why you cannot work with services.