Two versions of Xampp on Windows 7

[PioStudios]

I have an old version of Xampp (2.4.7) which I want to keep.
I installed the latest version of Xampp (3.2.4) in a new folder (C:\Xampp2)

I tried to follow advice in another post to switch the folder names by renaming original xampp folder and then renaming new folder 'xampp' to see if that would get the new version running, but Windows won't allow me to rename reporting that the program is "already open". I stopped Apache in Services.msc but this made no difference. It still won't allow me to re-name the folders.

Even though original xampp is now stopped in services.msc, the new version of Xampp will not start running.

When I tried to change the ports in new Xampp, via control panel, I get an error report : "Error - Cannot create file - "C:\Xampp2\xampp-control.ini" - access is denied".

Is there any way to configure the new Xampp so that it will run without conflicting with original version?

[colbyt]

Greetings.

I tried to do the same thing under win10 and I never got it to work properly. One time I thought I had it working but then it failed.

You might try not having either set up as a service, only use the the bat files to start them and the the 2 directories must have different name. IE xampp and xampp2. If you have desktop icons for each bat file make sure they point to the proper directory. Make absolutely sure that you quit one control file before opening another using the quit button and not the X.