Hi,
Thanks for trying to help. I figured out the solution finally.
Here's what was happening before. I had installed Apache via an installer, using the admin account. This installed the Apache Monitor which by default installed an "Apache 2.2" Service in the "Services" section of Administrative Tools. So when I used to log in with my normal user account/admin user account, the apache service would start up under the "System" role.
Somehow this was the problem. The moment i stopped this service, and use the command prompt to start httpd, things worked out fine.
I still don't know why this would happen. Any ideas? Anything that i can do to avoid having to start up httpd manually?