Let me paint the picture...
Win XP Pro - already have IIS installed (I am going to have to run both on the production server I'm trying to emulate.) Jumped through all the hoops for the port fight... IIS stayed on port 80 and 443 - moved Apache to 8080 and 4430 (followed instructions in thread: http://community.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?t=10364). Control panel says both Apache and MySQL start and run. Sweet!
(Though the control panel still reports port 80??? Wha? Please tell me it's hardcoded in the control panel - or is this part of my problem??)
I am not able to get it to respond at ALL to http://localhost:8080/index.html (I'm working from the base install of xampp.)
Thinking it wasn't really starting. I stopped the IIS to free up port 80 - and moved Apache to 80. I restart Apache - and I'm able to see that Apache gets a lock on port 80 via the port check tool - so I do have confirmation the Apache server is coming online.
But even with Apache set to port 80 - I'm not able to get any response from http://localhost/index.html
It shouldn't be a firewall issue - when IIS runs - I'm able to get ASP pages to serve from port 80.
Any ideas out in the cloud at all? Man am I humble on this one. I will listen to ALL advice!