I was installing XAMPP 1.70 for Windows on my Vista machine so I could run a copy of WordPress locally so I could work on a plug-in (I know, run-on sentence). Everything installed fine on Windows XP but Vista had problems. Apache and MySQL server started fine from the control panel. But when I typed in ‘localhost’ in Firefox, I had a PHP error message. The language options would not appear. BTW, the install path was c:xampp.
After some futile debugging, I realized I had a copy of PHP in the c:php directory which I installed so I could debug locally using Expression Web. Apparently XAMPP and this PHP install did not work together. After uninstalling c:php and reinstalling XAMPP everything went smooth. BTW, I uninstalled PHP on XP a few days ago which is why the XAMPP install went fine.
I highly recommend installing XAMPP for testing on your computer. I keep a copy of WordPress installed so I can test plug-ins and themes before using them live. No more FTPing for testing.
