Apache isn't cooperating

[Hanaryu]

I'm new to Apache, and because of this I'm having a lot of problems. After several hours of installing, carefully following these instructions: http://www.thesitewizard.com/apache/install-apache-on-vista.shtml word for word. I had everything running seemingly problem free. However, after copying the conf and htdocs files, it told me to delete the originals, but before I do this it tells me to turn off Apache. If I do, I cannot restart it and it will keep giving me the message: "The Requested Operation failed!" if I don't, it will turn it off when I try to access something later in the command prompt and will also give me the same message when I try to start it again. I've been trying to get it to work for 8 hours, and have searched everywhere online for the answer but everyone else who has gotten that message didn't have the solution I needed. When I looked at the error log it said nothing until when I tried to enter something on the control prompt it turned itself off, and gave me only this:

 

httpd.exe: Could not open configuration file C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf: The system cannot find the path specified. 

[sat Oct 17 19:26:09 2009] [warn] (OS 995)The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.  : winnt_accept: Asynchronous AcceptEx failed.

 

I'm trying to configure it with php5.2, and haven't even tried installing mySQL yet but that's (hopefully) next on my list once (if) I fix this. Several times I've had to reinstall the program, making sure the previous program is completely removed first.

If it's a stupid mistake I'm missing because I'm new to this, or something quite common, I'd appreciate some help to get rid of the headache it's giving me. Thanks.