Earlier this summer I installed XAMPP 1.8.0 and very successfully setup a Drupal website. I then tried to expose my website to the web so my friend could access the site. Ultimately all attempts failed as the site could not be seen outside of my local network. I think something during that time caused my current problem where I simply cannot access localhost. I have Apache and MySQL running as services. Port 80 is not being used by anything. In fact, Apache is using 443 and 8082 ports.
I have a faint memory that in the past I had to go to Services.msc and kickstarting something in there to get localhost running -- but I unfortunately did not a make a note of what I did. So at this point, I'd really love to get back to my site, but if that fails, if I can somehow save my MySQL database (which I can't access either to export it out) so I can restart with XAMPP again is my second choice...