So I’ve just installed VMWare Workstation 8 to try out the new Windows 8 Developer Preview. That was all good.
But when I got back to write some code in my local environment (using XAMPP), I found that Apache won’t start properly anymore.
I’ve checked my previous post how to change XAMPP http port and verified that nothing has changed in my httpd.conf. http port was still set at 8080.
But little did I know that Apache needs an available port for https (default = 443) too for it to startup properly.
However, after installing VMware workstation 8, port 443 has been occupied by vmware-hostd.exe. I was able to trace it down the port is being used by VMware Workstation Server.
In order to get over this, I had to change the SSL port number that XAMPP Apache listens to.
– Open up httpd-ssl.conf in path2xampp\apache\conf\extra
– Look for the line Listen 443
– Change port number to anything you want. I use 4430. ex. Listen 4430.
– Replace every 443 string with 4430. Save the file.
– Restart XAMPP Apache and it should start up normally again.
– That’s it. Done.
* Speaking from experience, XAMPP ran perfectly fine together with workstation 5, 6 and 7 previously. It looks like the new VMware workstation server was something introduced so that VMs can be dragged directly into VMware vSphere or something.
* Reference: Install Problem: Apache Won’t Start
Conclusion
If Apache won’t start, make sure that that port 80 and port 443 are available and not being used by other software. If any of those ports are already being used by other software, Apache will fail to start. If so, you can change these ports in httpd.conf and httpd-ssl.conf. In my case, I changed them to 8080 and 4430.
Leave a comment below if you find this helpful or you have other questions.
4h34d says
Thanks for the info, I had the same issue!
Mike says
Thx a lot!
Had the same problem, works fine now 😉
DiepDH says
It works, thank you very much! 😉
. says
fyi
Si se tiene instalado vmware workstation 8 por defecto activa el puerto 443, ir a edit → preferences → SharedVMs → Changed Settings y cambiarlo por ejemplo al 4430.
Inside vmware workstation go to edit → preferences → SharedVMs → Changed Settings
Now you can change the port 443 to other for example 4430.
Rabah says
Thanks very much , that was great help.
Chris says
Thanks a lot. Just got a new laptop, installed VMware Workstation and xampp. Much puzzlement. Netstat doesn’t show anything listening on 80 or 443 but Apache error reported couldn’t make a socket. Googled for your solution. FWIW VMware Player doesn’t use those ports and apache works out of the box.