Apache Virtual Host problems

[kimmik]

Just to reiterate I'm new here and "simply" trying to upgrade from a fully working Apache 2.2/PHP5.3/MYSQL5.5 setup on Windows 7 using XAMPP.

The original Apache setup had several domains example.localhost example2.localhost ... set up to mange website development on the local server - Everything Prefect.

New "projects" were simply added by editing the conf\httpd.conf file with the line "Include conf/extra/httpd-examplex.conf"

and the new file /httpd-examplex.conf created and added to the extra directory.

To upgrade to XAMPP the extra *.conf files were copied from the old Apache2.2 backup to XAMPP/Apache/conf/extra and the httpd.conf amended to indicate the includes.

The Apache server was shutdown and restarted from the Control Panel without any obvious errors.

HOWEVER!
Entering examplex.localhost in a browser results in the following

[an error occurred while processing this directive] You don't have permission to access the requested object. It is either read-protected or not readable by the server. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

a typical httpd-examplex.conf is as follows:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName examplex.localhost
DocumentRoot "D:/WEB/examplex_info/htdocs"
ServerAlias www.examplex.localhost www.examplex_info.localhost www.examplex_uk.localhost www.examplex_co_uk,localhost
ErrorLog "D:/WEB/examplex_info/htdocs/logs/error.log"
CustomLog "D:/WEB/examplex_info/htdocs/logs/access.log" common
ServerAdmin admin@examplex.info
</VirtualHost>
#
<Directory D:/WEB/examplex_info/htdocs>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

It may be relevant that the html/php files index.html etc do actually reside in the D:/WEB/examplex_info/htdocs directory (nothing has changed there) and yes the D: is a different volume. All attempts on all of the virtual hosts result in the same error. and yes I am running with admin (Full) access.

Has something changed with Apache 2.4 setup ?

Thanks in advance.

[gsmith]

This:
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

in now this:
Require all granted

see: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/upgrading.html

[kimmik]

@gsmith

Thank you for that information and link (I guess I should have looked for myself - but honestly upgrading should be made straightforward - after all these years I guess I should have known better)

Following "updating" over 200 "project" httpd-***.conf files we now have something much closer to normality.

However, not out of the woods yet!

The new problem is that making all these changes seem to have broken the basic XAMPP default page.
(I have checked httpd.conf and the line 264 still indicates "Require all granted" and the directory directive and document root still point to "C:/XAMPP/htdocs")

Makes me wonder what else is broken.