Difficulty with XAMPP upgrade

[christaliise]

I've spent the last 3 years attempting to get a website partner for an International trading website, but now I have given up on that idea and decided to learn development alone, although still open to a partnership, however at first I installed XAMPP version 1.7.7 and added a CodeIgniter based registration script, but now get this message - Unable to connect to your database server using the provided settings. Filename: C:\xampp\htdocs\system\database\DB_driver.php Line Number: 124

With that problem, together with the CodeIgniter changes and the XAMPP new version 5.6.8 I've decided to upgrade both. However I want to keep the old versions to enable retrieving data that has been entered into the old versions. I prefer to keep the old versions separate so that I know what portions are old and new.

I have attempted to change the name of the old version of XAMPP but I'm unable to do that and get this response - "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file is open in another program." I guess the referred folders are "Apache" and "MySQL". I've gone into XAMPP Control Panel and note "Apache" and "MySQL" are "Running" and if I click "Stop" I get ERROR messages and they don't stop. I've done some research and found that I need to be logged in as "Administrator". I've gone into Win7 Control Panel - User Accounts - and found that I'm listed as "Administrator" password protected. I've tried rebooting but that does not help. I now need guidance but open to suggestions on alternative methods to upgrade that has the same effects as in the previous paragraph.

[Altrea]

Beeing a administrator user and running a process as administrator are two different things in windows 7.
rightclick the control panel exe file and choose "run as administrator"

btw: codeigniter is one of the frameworks that are known to be very very compatible with old environments, so using XAMPP 1.7.7 should not be your problem.

[christaliise]

Thank you for your quick response. I've clicked "Run as administer" and get ERROR: XAMPP is already running. The only way I know to avoid that message is to reboot. Is there a quicker way?

[christaliise]

For the benefit of other viewers;

I right clicked the control panel exe file in XAMPP folder and clicked "Run as administrator" and then I needed to Exit the control panel.

If the XAMPP control panel is running the above can't be done and I found I had to reboot to start the control panel fresh, then carry out the above.

Once all of that was done, I renamed the old XAMPP folder.