Getting XAMPP to work on Windows 7 (64-bit)
XAMPP will work on Windows 7 (64-bit), because that's what I use. Here are the steps to install it:
1. Download the ZIP file instead of the the EXE file, and save it to your "Downloads" folder.
2. Using 7-zip, or WinRAR, or WinZip, or whatever compression tool you prefer, right-click on the xampp-win32-1.7.x.zip file and select "Extract here" it doesn't matter where you downloaded the ZIP file to, it will create a new folder called "xampp" and extract all contents within it.
3. After extracting the ZIP file, move the newly created "xampp" folder from "Downloads" to "C:\"
Note: It MUST be in a top-level directory such as "C:\", NOT within another folder such as "C:\Program Files (x86)."
4. Next, go to "Start > Control Panel > User Accounts," and turn off the User Account Control (UAC). This will cause problems if left turned on. If you aren't familiar with how to do this, there are plenty of tutorials on the web to show you how.
5. Now, navigate to "C:\xampp" and right-click "xampp-control.exe" and in the dialog pop up select: "Send to > Desktop (create shortcut)"
6. Double-click on the new XAMPP Control Desktop shortcut which opens up the XAMPP Control Panel Application. There you will see a column of "Start" buttons, select the one for MySQL and the one for Apache... you should now see a green "Running" indicator.
7. Open up your Web Browser, and type in
http://localhost in which you should be presented with the XAMPP splash screen... Success!!!