WAMP Server not started after installation

WAMP server is one of the popular web development environment which allow to run web applications over Apache2 server with the support of PHP scripting and MySQL database. Many of us facing an annoying problem after installing the WAMP Server. The WAMP server not started soon after installation on development machine. WAMP server turn on indicator di d not turn to green when click on the WAMP server icon on the desktop. The quick launch tray shows the WAMP server icon in orange color instead of green. Even after clicking on the Menu ->Start All Services, WAMP server not started and the system tray icon remains orange.

WAMP Server not started after installation:

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It is noticed that there will be no error message/pop-up displayed on the screen, which notify the user that some error has occurred at the application startup. It becomes difficult to locate the problem of what exactly happened. In this article, you will learn how to solve this problem by troubleshooting it step by step, making the WAMP server up and running on your computer.

Identify the problem:

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As you are already aware, the WAMP server collectively installs Apache2, PHP, and MySql databases. Since WAMP server integrated these applications, it cannot directly handle/display errors associated with these applications. Further, it is important to identify why the WAMP server did not start, and out of these three applications, which one is broken. At the high level investigation, check for the application event log on Event Viewer is one of the great diagnostics tool from Windows. Here is the Event Viewer top-level log detail, which shows the error logs when the WAMP server failed to start.

By looking at the Event Viewer logs, you can quickly locate the application causing the problem. Apache Service reported some error in the above logs when the WAMP server tried to start or initialize the Apache service.

We have identified that the WAMP server failed to start the Apache2 service due to some error at the initialization time. For further analysis, let’s run the Apache server independently in console mode using the windows command prompt and see what happens. Follow the below steps;

1. Start the Windows Command Prompt console.
2. Navigate to WAMP server installation folder. E.g. C:\Wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\bin
3. Execute the httpd.exe. After executing the httpd.exe application, the console redirected error as below.

The error observed is:

You can notice that the error code/message in the console is the same as the Event Viewer log. As per the above error #AH00072, the Apache server function make_socket is unable to bind to the IP address 0.0.0.0.0 and port 80. This is because port 80 is being used by one of the application processes currently running on the same computer. Hence error #AH00451 occurred as there are no listening sockets are available. Hence it could not start the Apache application. The listening socket is configured in httpd.conf which is located in C:\Wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\httpd.conf. 

Now, the root cause for the problem has been identified and the question still remains that, which application process is using port 80. To find the port assignment details, run the netstat command on the command prompt. the command netstat display the protocol statistics and current TCP/IP network connections. After executing the netstat command, you can easily identify port #80 is used by Skype process (PID 4868) as below.

Solution:

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Follow the below steps to solve WAMP Server not started after installation problem by releasing the default assigned to port 80 from the Skype.

Note:

It is also possible that port 80 may also be used by some other application process.

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