Hi Izzy. Thanks for responding.
I unpacked the zip into the top level of the drive and, as instructed, did NOT run setup_xampp.bat. Then I started xampp-control, started Apache and tried to browse to 127.0.0.1.
Netstat tells me that Apache is listening on port 80. When I browse to it, Netstat tells me that the connection is ESTABLISHED. Never the less, the browser spins and reports that it is "waiting for 127.0.0.1".
Additional information:
Each time I start Apache the error log reports
[warn] pid file . . ./xampp/apache/logs/httpd.pid overwritten -- Unclean shutdown of previous Apache run?
I am stopping Apache via the xampp-control each time and the status reports that it has stopped.
I believe that we are in widely different time zones so I will continue to research my machine. Any insight you may offer will be much appreciated.