Virtual Hosts.Not essential but, IMHO, works much better than not using it as it allows you to still maintain and access localhost and that is to use a
VirtualHost.
This can be configured in the C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf file but first and most importantly
you must return your httpd.conf file back to the default settings used after installing XAMPP.
Here is an example vhost configuration for you to experiment with by replacing my red entries with your actual settings.
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/example"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs/example" >
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/xampp/htdocs/example/cgi-bin/"
ServerAdmin serveradmin@example.com
CustomLog example_access.log combined
ErrorLog example_error.log
LogLevel error
</VirtualHost>
Items in red need to be edited with your actual names.
DocumentRoot, Directory and ScriptAlias must be identical folders and can be located anywhere suitable on your PC.
Save the file after editing and restart Apache to have the file read.
Now try and access http://
example.com and
http://www.
example.com in your browser.
Read the C:\xampp\apache\logs\error.log file if you have any issues on re-starting Apache.
If you do have issues then please paste here your complete httpd-vhosts.conf file or if you have issues with sensitive data then please feel free to paste it in a PM (forum Personal Message) to me.
Hopefully the above will have you moving forward.
If it's any consolation, I too moved multiple sites away from GoDaddy for much the same reasons as you, plus their website seems to be loaded with tricky traps for the unwary and is extremely slow to use for anything worth while, like configuring the domains and web hosting settings - a cPanel/WHM host is a much preferred option IMHO.
Good luck.