I cannot open Apache

I downloaded and installed apache. I have apache services monitor running. But, apache 2.2 will not start. When I try to start it, it says "the requested operation has failed". During the install it said I already had something running on the port apache needed to run. I have already used netstat and tcpview (both giving me different results, different netstats also giving me different results. So I was wondering if there is a way to see what is running on port 80. I cannot use fport as I am running vista.

Thanks,
-Nickkelbackk

netstat will tell you. Do netstat /? and review the different option switches, there is one that will give you the PID's and you can take the PID to task manager and identify the process.

Make sure you don't have IIS already running on port 80.

I do not have port 80 being used in netstat -o.
But, I do in netstat -a.
I also have something running on port 443, but again, it does not show up in netstat -a.
I do not know what IIS is, so I am pretty certain that is not it.

I think I figured it out. A long time ago I installed WampServer, which has apache in it.

Nope, just uninstalled Wampserver and apache still failed at installation.

I got it working, it was skype..

I suspect you do indeed have IIS running.That would be IIS.

You will need to shut IIS down, and do so in a way such that it will not restart when you reboot Windows.

I don't know enough about running Web servers on Windows to tell you how to do this, but Google is your friend.

But to me, it seems pretty clear something, most likely a Web server (IIS is Microsoft's Web server) is running in conflict with Apache on the same ports Apache uses, which are normally 80 and 443.

Do you use skype? It has a habit of binding port 80 as well.

Is that so? What does it use it for? I would have thought that most home users would have these ports blocked ether with Windows Firewall or 3rd party firewall, or at the cable/dsl router. No?

netstat -o doesn't show listening ports, only connected ports. In windows I use netstat -ano to inspect listening ports. Using that, you should be able to identify the process that's listening on port 80. If it's IIS you can stop it from the windows service control manager, but if IIS is running on your machine someone or some program enabled it, and if you turn off IIS you may end up breaking something else that's using IIS.

Also, you should inspect your error message(s) again also, this entire conversation is based on pretty general non-specific descriptions of your problem you gave, maybe the error is really trying to tell you something else. Copies of actual error text and more specific descriptions of problems generally get you better help.

Thanks for your help everybody, it was skype. I am not sure what it was doing on port 80 though. I have both skype and apache running just fine now.

Excuse my Windows ignorance...

But, if you (me, anyone) is not using IIS as a Web server, than what else might be using it, and is it safe to have it enabled? Can IIS and Apache coexist on port 80/443 together? Again, what else would be using it?

It sounds dodgy to me to leave it running while not actively using it or not knowing what else is using it. Leaving unused/unwanted/unknown services running on a Windows box open to the wild... I don't know... Sounds dangerous.

Just wondering...

Just make Apache run as a service and the next time you reboot Skype will have to abuse some other port

I'm not that familiar with windows either, but there may exist applications which use IIS to serve certain portions of the application. For example, I believe VMWare server 2 uses a web server to serve basically the entire application. (However, since VMWare is cross platform I doubt it uses IIS) As a similar example, Microsoft Office Accounting depends on and installs Microsoft SQL server when you install it, which is a similar type of dependency.


Only if they are bound to different IP's. You can't have both listening to the same port on the same IP.


Skype is the only program I know of that binds port 80 that isn't a web server... and there's a good reason that most programs avoid it.... Honestly I can't think of any benefits to binding port 80.

Don't have IIS running unless there is a need to use it. If you're using visual studio you may need IIS available. If you're on SBS at least older versions required IIS to use the SBS console. There are a few other things that may need/require IIS, the ones I mentioned can't use apache as an alternative.

It was mostly a general recommendation "don't just turn off services without knowing what the impact will be on your system".

I'm curious why skype would bind to port 80 too ..

Well the general idea behind Skype listening on ports 80 and 443 (if it is allowed to) was to ensure connectivity because those two are required to be available for usual browser requests. In other words if any port was to be disabled on a specific host those two would be the last two because by disabling them people would not be able to browse the Internet with regular browsers. There is an option to disable this kind of behavior though.

Web browsing only requires port 80 outbound be unblocked on the client. Binding to port 80 the way skype does is only useful for inbound connections on port 80, and from my point of view inbound port 80 would be one of the most blocked ports by corporate firewalls.

That's what I would think too, to me it seems that skype listening on port 80 for anything wouldn't see a whole lot of traffic getting to it. Many consumer ISP's also block port 80 inbound.