In the installation directory, you would see a program called Port Check ( xampp-portcheck.exe). For an example, if you do so for Skype, it will find another port for working after restarting. In such a case, you would need to stop other service temporary and restart it after starting Apache. An easy reproducible way for this error is starting Skype before starting Apache. This is usually because some other service is running at the port required by Apache which is 80 by default. Sometimes you would experience that even after clicking Start button several times, Apache is not starting. To exit from XAMPP, click on Exit button in XAMPP Control Panel. Clicking on that icon will show/hide XAMPP control panel. Once opened, you would see XAMPP icon on the right of your task bar.
Click on Start buttons next to Apache and MySQL for starting them. Go to the location where you installed XAMPP (usually C:\Program Files\xampp) and double click on XAMPP Control Panel ( xampp-control.exe).
Instructions provided in this article are based on Windows operating system but the approaches should be similar for other operating systems.
