Clearing Port 80

[Gafaddict]

I recently removed Apache (along with PHP and MySQL -- only extensions to it I had) from my system (Windows XP Home Edition, SP2) as it had simply stopped working and nothing I attempted could get it to work again. I tried to install an older version of it, 1.3, but whenever I try to do so it tells me that a service is still using Port 80. Whenever I try to access localhost, localhost:80, 127.0.0.1, or anything of the like, I simply get a blank page rather than a "address cannot be resolved" error or something similar.

 

I looked at my services list in Computer Management and it didn't seem to be there... so is there any way to remove this ghost Apache service from my computer?

[daq]

Try netstat -b in command prompt. That will give you a list of all connections and the names of processes which established that connection. This way you can see which process is listening on port 80.

Then get a program like prcviewer. It will tell you the path of the process. Kill it, then erase the exe file.

[Gafaddict]

Thanks for the suggestion. I ran netstat -b, but in the whole returned log, there were no processes running on port 80. Additionally I ran prcviewer, but I could't find anything I could immediately mark as the problem (e.g. httpd.exe still trying to run).

[daq]

Blank page doesn't really mean anything is listening, it just means the port is open in the firewall. There are programs other than apache that have http interfaces and they sometimes listen on port 80. They could have been failing before because apache started earlier and occupied the port, but now they are free to use it.

 

Try netstat -ab just to make sure it displays everything. You can do netstat -ab>netstat.txt. This will save output to netstat.txt so you can search it.

 

Also, just to be sure, try 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost.

 

Does apache start if you try to listen on different port? (Edit "Listen 80" line in httpd.conf)

 

Try telnet 80. If you get any responses, there might be something non-http listening that doesn't respond to browser requests.

 

 

[Gafaddict]

netstat -ab didn't show anything listening in on Port 80 either. telnet 80 got me no responses.

 

BUT -- I did change the Apache conf from "Listen 80" to another port number. It starts successfully now and I can access the server. Thanks very much, at least that's working!

[daq]

You can change to 8080 I think most browsers try it by default if 80 fails.