Hi rogerL1,
I have merged all of your posts into one single one. Please don't use unsolved topics of other users for your own ones, because environments and issues can be very different (One thread per unique user and issue rule).
rogerL1 wrote:I have the same problem with port 80. Apparently, its Skype which grabs it.
I replaced port 80 with port 8080 as recommended (in "httpd.conf") but I still can't get it to work.
Where do you read that it is recommend to change the port if Skype is grabbing it? It is not!
The recommend way is to configure Skype to NOT grab port 80 and 443. This can be easily done in Skype.
Port 80 is the default port for HTTP communication, Port 443 for HTTPS. Skype misuse this ports for its own protocols.
rogerL1 wrote:xampp says its already running when I activate it, but it won't do anything else (like take notice of Joomla).
??? So is Skype using the port already or another Apache instance?
Provide us the full contents of your XAMPP control panel log field and your \xampp\apache\logs\error.log
rogerL1 wrote:It seems to be fairly common bug: but the solution hasn't succeeded yet.
It's not a bug! Apache needs to listen on some static ports to work correct. Each port can only be blocked by a single process and if it is already blocked, Apache can't work.
give us more information and we see what we can do for you.
best wishes,
Altrea