How to restart apache

[JonB]

and that alone caused the weird XAMPP control panel problem, produced the error

I have a thought - save the current php.ini by renaming, or whatever you prefer. Re-introduce the default php.ini from the XAMPP DL. IF the problem goes away - bingo - you know what's wrong.

I can think of a situation that would cause the exact thing we see - an "include" statement from a non-XAMPP php extension that assumes the default location (The Apache Software Foundation's installation) for Apache and MySQL.

You can use a tool like WinMerge to compare them line by line (Indeed your whoel install if you chose). Then re-introduce any changes you made that won't cause problems.

http://winmerge.org/

Good Luck

[horseatingweeds]

So, should there be a php.ini-default in the xampp/php directory? I've got php.ini, php.ini-dist, and php.ini-recommended. dist and recommended look similar to each other, but are very different from php.ini. And I know I didn't make all those changes. The only changes I made to this php.ini - or any php.ini for that mater, is to disable register globals, enable mbstring extension, and increase memory limit. I also made some changes to enable xdebug, which caused or allowed me to notice the control panel problem, but have since reverted back to a copy I made just prior.

Is there a fresh php.ini downloadable anywhere handy? I still have the original installer.exe I used a year ago, but I don't remember what exactly it did. I'm tempted to run it in a temp folder somewhere and get a fresh php.ini file that way. But I don't want to cause more problems by letting an install file fool with something. Also, does the install process edit the php.ini?

Thanks