Microsoft Windows – They are just faking it..

..And blagging their way through what realistically should have been a very short business life.

Let me explain.

We know Microsoft is a blue chip company with a huge global presence. They have by far the largest percentage of global operating system usage – roughly around 85% market share.

Normally that would be considered a major achievement, as nearly any major saleable product or service is duplicated or copied and mass marketed by multiple companies around the world.
But there are only two contenders that could compete against Microsoft’s operating system – Linux and Macintosh OS X – and with less than 20% total market share to split between them both, it’s not worrying competition for Microsoft.

But shouldn’t we then give Microsoft credit for achieving this incredible market position in the first place? Yes of course. But while taking no credit away from Microsoft for achieving this, the global domination could easily have been someone else’s.
Back in the times when operating systems were for people who could write applications in binary, had green teeth, no girlfriend and didn’t even know what a pub was, all that was required for any company to start a spiral into market domination was simply to introduce a huge global advertising campaign.

There were plenty of other operating systems, arguably better ones too. In fact Microsoft ‘borrowed’ many ideas from the competition, parcelled it up into a nice neat package, made it slightly more user friendly than the competition and told the entire world “this is what you need”.

Their figures for revenue and profit are commendable.
In 2008, Microsoft was impressively ranked 7th of the Financial Times Global 500, and rated 63rd on the Forbes 2000 list.
In one year on the Forbes 2000 list, if their metric used was solely market value, Microsoft would have come in first at $270 billion.

Figures and rankings are from Forbes and Financial Times websites:
Forbes Data on Microsoft
Forbes 200 list
Financial Times 500

Usage of revenue:
Yet, all those billions of dollars they make each year are seemingly not used well at all, as their operating systems are always rolled out with problems, and none to this day have been 100% user friendly for the standard end user.

With the huge profit and resource available to Microsoft, one expects a better service and higher standard of product than a smaller company
Yet a lot of small companies with only a few thousand dollars monthly revenue manage to provide products, services or software that is more stable and reliable than Microsoft’s. In fact, many businesses achieve this for free, relying only on donations.

It is of course arguable that Microsoft Windows is considerably more complex than most other software, but then Microsoft’s profits, work force and the immense amount of resources available must also be considered in proportion.

So, what’s bad about Microsoft Windows?
Well…. All their operating systems have been far from perfect and don’t come up to the expected standard! A bold or unfair statement? Not really, and it’s not just an opinion .. it’s a fact…

Windows XP and Vista are their modern versions, and truthfully (and mercifully), all the versions of Windows prior to XP were in times of old thinking, old computers, little in the way of decent resources and hardware and of course importantly were developed in times of learning – the baby stages.

So, let’s review XP.

XP was released in 2001, a year after Win 2000 and a long time after 3.11, 95, 98 were developed and released.
Windows was a young adult by then that should have been dumped by a few girlfriends, been out to work and learned to stagger home drunk. Simply put, it should have matured.
But alas, it still had spots, no pubic hairs and frequently had, and still has, random tantrums.
Surely during Microsoft’s tweaking, obtaining feedback and developing all these previous versions over 6 years, they were developing Windows to be a better system?

From 3.11 to Win 95 this was very true, the newer version(s) did accomplish ’significant’ improvements over the older ones.
But after we got over the excitement and wonder of having this “Windows” system in our homes, and the sparkle wore off from Win 95’s vast improvement of Win 3.11’s not-so-friendly environment, we wanted something more substantial, something with great performance, excellent functions and importantly easy to use.

Windows XP brought a lot of this, with performance and functionality improvements over its predecessors, but a lot of people don’t have a major interest in their PC.
They just want to go on the internet, and perhaps download some software to play their MP3’s or a photo album for their family pictures (etc).
And standard users get lost and bewildered, for example, when the download goes wrong, or they don’t know where the software is downloaded to or installed, or when trying to run their newly installed software there are errors. There is no help within Windows to assist these people – ‘Microsoft’s customers’ – with the everyday usages of the software..

Of course Microsoft also developed Windows with professionals and businesses in mind, and not just home users. And they tried to cater for individual needs with their “Home” and “Professional” editions, but the difference between them both was pointless in terms of providing for two very different sets of requirements.

Home should have been simple with a very useful and in depth help and assistance system to help standard private home users wanting to do basic things like surf the net and play movies and music etc. Explanations of errors and typical reasons and possible fixes should come with the pop up errors.
And then Professional should have had a lot more functionality for business requirements, like more networking facilities and more scope with the user management system.

But instead, the two had the above suggestions mixed in together, and neither was individually developed to work solely for Home use or solely Business use.

Error – your computer produces too much smoke…
Still to this day with XP and even Vista, it is only considered “easy to use” when it works perfectly. As soon as an issue with Windows or a third party software occurs, most standard users, and sometimes even IT experts, are left scratching their heads when windows “informs” the user “Stop: 0×0000000A
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
112 Address 25 has base at df – xhg66.dll”
Huh?

Even without the above error report being useless to standard users, to understand a lot of what are considered basic everyday functions a user has to have some IT knowledge, or at least a good deal of time spent learning Windows.
Some people, as well as Microsoft, will argue against all this, claiming it IS easy to use. But most of those people simply don’t realise the lack of PC skill and knowledge a user has, and often forget that just because they themselves are familiar with something and it’s easy to them, doesn’t mean it’s the same for those with less knowledge and experience.
And in Microsoft’s case, most of them are IT professionals who develop Windows without a thought towards the fact that a lot of end users barely manage to find their “My Documents” folder.

There were great new avenues opened with XP, especially when compared to ME, with some amazing new features and options both graphical and functional. But as with most things on the operating system, having to resolve issues, fix bugs or figure out how it all worked and discover were everything is located simply took the shine off it.

Even if an end user did figure out how to use it, and were getting to a stage were they could confidently change settings and set up their Windows environment to their pleasing, along came the next Windows version with many of the basic locations and functions changed around and moved somewhere else.
So the standard end user could no longer find all the things they had spend months figuring out.

It’s like getting into your car one day and the pedals are on the roof, the steering wheel under the seat and all the roads have been hidden in secret locations.

Please tell us if it works ok…
Also, not only did XP roll out with horrendous bugs, major security issues and problems with third party software, but Microsoft cheekily implemented an “error reporting service”.
They basically relied on their end users, their customers – that’s me and you – to effectively quality control the product and tell them all the errors we found so they could then fix them.

Imagine you buy a new car and the doors fall off, and the manufacturer tells you “Oh, thanks for that info, we’ll fix the next batch of cars. In the meantime, here’s a bag of nuts and bolts and you can fit the old doors back on yourself”.
Well, that was Windows XP’s idea of resolving the many bugs it was released with.
Which could have been more acceptable if it was reasonably priced. But let’s face it, something that doesn’t work properly most of the time, and confuses us regardless of whether it works or not, isn’t worth installing for free let alone the hundreds of dollars they want for it.

If a clothing company produces garments that fall apart in the washing machine, the sales outlets get tired with replacing them and giving refunds, so stop stocking clothes from that company.
The clothing company either goes bankrupt, or manages to resolve the issue and then has to try very hard to convince its outlets and customers that it has learned by its mistakes and their new clothing range is sorted.

So with Microsoft and the comparison above …The world was sick of XP, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of forums full of complaints, disgruntled customers, people without a clue on how to operate Windows or change settings. There are websites full of fixes, tutorials, common and unique faults, Microsoft’s site full of updates, security patches, fixes etc.

And what is Microsoft’s answer to all of that?
Well, they don’t have one, they simply whack out another one, call it Vista and pray it works a bit better than when XP was first released.

If their software is supposedly so terrible, how do they get away with it?
Other companies don’t get away with this, regardless of their size – large, small or global.
If all Sony’s stereos blew up when you used them, they wouldn’t get any sales.

But due to their being no competition to Microsoft Windows, and therefore them having an 85% market share, nearly everyone is forced to use Windows.
This gives Microsoft a monopoly on the market.
Homes, schools, councils, governments and businesses all rely on it, and without an alternative well known system to turn to, we all simply have to put up with it.

So, is vista any better then?
Vista does have some improvements over XP. Visual enhancements were improved with new transparencies, live icons and thumbnails.
They have tried to make things in a more logically organised structure. With an attempt at more user friendly menu systems. Like the Control Panel being less IT-Geeky.

But it yet again removed or changed all the folder locations and options we had all gotten used to.
One thing I see asked and moaned about a lot is the removal of the drop down menu items in explorer. You can press the ALT key, and change the option of this view, but WHY did they remove the drop down menus that contained all the options people had only just become used to using?

The software crash recovery is vastly improved in Vista, in fact I tried very hard to get it to hang, and it just happily ended programs in the background.
And as insignificant as it may seem, Vista not having the issue where multiple file deletion would simply stop the entire delete queue when one of the selected files couldn’t be deleted, was a sigh of relief.
But why wasn’t it in an earlier version of Windows?

In the 10 years from Win95 to the fix in Vista (2005), did NO-ONE at Microsoft EVER try to delete more than one file at a time and get annoyed at it halting the entire deletion queue for one pesky file?
This is the exact lack of thought that seems to be missing from the development of Windows – the simple things to standard users are often not catered for. And however trivial the file deletion may seem, it’s this kind of end user requirement and functionality that is always missing, that and the lack of end user support.

Quick, make another one, no-one might notice…
So, Vista is released, although XP still has issues…

The last time I tried to update Windows XP to service pack 3, the process went for about 15 minutes only to tell me “You don’t have permission”.
Don’t have permission, *sigh*, is this not my PC in front of me?

Why produce yet another version of Windows when the previous version hasn’t been perfected or even fixed?

Once everyone has bought the current Windows version, Microsoft release another one. Then the world goes out and buys the newer one presuming as it’s the newer version it must be improved and more secure.
Who would have guessed it – It comes down to money!

Why don’t they just stick with XP for a few more years and improve that?
Ok so it is acceptable that the newer versions, Vista, has architecture in that the previous version, XP, doesn’t have, and certain aspects of the new architecture and structure allows them to progress and develop new functions and features.
This is all a good thing if the new structures allow for improvements. And it is also acceptable that a company wants to develop new software and improve on their old one.
But as portrayed here, they don’t really improve or fix issues in the newer version, they simply change them around and add more complex features that probably aren’t necessary or used by most users.

As Vista is the latest Windows version and is the current up-to-date software, and as Vista itself is nearly 3 years old, we can safely say XP is most certainly no longer a modern version of Windows, it is now 8 years old.
So, then, can we please have XP for a massively reduced price then?
Is that someone mumbling something in Redmond?

Keep trying to improve…
Microsoft are working on the next Windows version.
Currently the inspired name is “Windows 7″.
Let’s just hope it’s as good as methode seems think.
Read about Windows 7

This article is only the opinion of the author, although does include some factual content.
And although this article resides on devoracles, they do not necessarily agree with the author’s opinions.

Windows 7 drivers for nVidia GeForce graphics boards

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — NVIDIA today announced the immediate availability of new graphics drivers from www.nvidia.com for NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GPU owners running the new Windows 7 Beta. Today’s availability represents the start of regular NVIDIA driver updates for the forthcoming operating system from Microsoft. Windows 7 will be the first Windows operating system to fully integrate and take advantage of the GPU for both graphics and parallel computing.

“Since its release last month, the Windows 7 Beta has been eagerly tested by hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GeForce owners, who are excited about the many graphical improvements Microsoft has added into the upcoming operating system,” said Ujesh Desai, vice president of GeForce desktop business at NVIDIA.

GeForce version 181.71 graphics drivers, released today on NVIDIA.com, support the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) v1.1 from Microsoft. Powered by NVIDIA DirectX 10 GPUs, WDDM v1.1 drivers provide an optimal visual experience in Windows 7. These drivers offer increased performance and reliability in both 2D and 3D applications, including the 3D Windows Aero desktop.

“We expect that all of our hard work teaming with Microsoft over the past two years will pay off for GeForce GPU owners when Windows 7 officially launches,” said Dwight Diercks, vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA. “Our customers are demanding an experience that is faster and more visual, and with the addition of many new GPU-accelerated features, including DirectX Compute, we believe Windows 7 will be well positioned to meet those needs.”

To download the new Windows 7 Beta drivers for NVIDIA GPUs, please visit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_7.html

Press release – nVidia

Microsoft announces 6 editions of Windows 7

Windows 7 is probably the best Microsoft operating system to date. We tested this operating system since its first appearance and we can confidently state that it’s much more faster than Vista’s any edition, its compatibility with software and hardware is outstanding and its performance is much better than we thought it will be. It was extremely welcomed worldwide, the vast majority of the technical blogs sung arias about Windows 7 for days.

Yet, until now Microsoft did not reveal any information about the editions or the price of Windows 7. It had to be a hard decision to take.
The information regarding the Windows 7 editions weren’t leaked, but published on the Microsoft Partner portals and can be viewed by any MS partner.

Windows 7 Editions

Windows 7 Starter:

• Broad application and device compatibility with up to three concurrent applications.
• Safe, reliable, and supported.
• Home Group makes it easy to share media, documents and printers across multiple PCs in offices without a domain.
• Improved taskbar and JumpLists .

This will be a limited edition. This means that it will be available for a limited time, probably distributed for a very short period of time.

Windows 7 Home Basic:

• Broad application and device compatibility with unlimited concurrent applications.
• Safe, reliable, and supported .
• Home Group makes it easy to share media, documents and printers across multiple PCs in offices without a domain.
• Improved taskbar and JumpLists .
• Live thumbnail previews and enhanced visual experience.
• Advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing).
• Mobility Center is included.

This edition will be released only for the emerging markets.

Windows 7 Home Premium:

• Broad application and device compatibility with unlimited concurrent applications.
• Safe, reliable, and supported .
• Home Group makes it easy to share media, documents and printers across multiple PCs in offices without a domain.
• Improved taskbar and JumpLists .
• Live thumbnail previews and enhanced visual experience.
• Advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing).
• Mobility Center is included.
• Aero Glass and advanced windows navigation.
• Easy networking and sharing across all your PCs and devices.
• Improved media format support , enhancements to Windows Media Center and media streaming, including Play To.
• Multi-touch and improved handwriting recognition.

Windows 7 Professional:

• Broad application and device compatibility with unlimited concurrent applications.
• Safe, reliable, and supported .
• Home Group makes it easy to share media, documents and printers across multiple PCs in offices without a domain.
• Improved taskbar and JumpLists .
• Live thumbnail previews and enhanced visual experience.
• Advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing).
• Mobility Center is included.
• Aero Glass and advanced windows navigation.
• Easy networking and sharing across all your PCs and devices.
• Improved media format support , enhancements to Windows Media Center and media streaming, including Play To.
• Multi-touch and improved handwriting recognition.
• Domain Join enables simple and secure server networking.
• Encrypting File System protects data with advanced network backup.
• Location Aware Printing helps find the right printer when moving between the office and home.

Windows 7 Enterprise:

• Broad application and device compatibility with unlimited concurrent applications.
• Safe, reliable, and supported .
• Home Group makes it easy to share media, documents and printers across multiple PCs in offices without a domain.
• Improved taskbar and JumpLists .
• Live thumbnail previews and enhanced visual experience.
• Advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing).
• Mobility Center is included.
• Aero Glass and advanced windows navigation.
• Easy networking and sharing across all your PCs and devices.
• Improved media format support , enhancements to Windows Media Center and media streaming, including Play To.
• Multi-touch and improved handwriting recognition.
• Domain Join enables simple and secure server networking.
• Encrypting File System protects data with advanced network backup.
• Location Aware Printing helps find the right printer when moving between the office and home.
• BitLocker protects data on removable devices.
• DirectAccess links users to corporate resources from the road without a virtual private network (VPN).
• BranchCache makes if faster to open files and Web pages from a branch office.
• AppLocker easily restricts unauthorized software and enables greater security.

And finally the Windows 7 Ultimate addition which includes each feature of Windows 7 Enterprise but is designed for individuals rather than MS partners and MS professionals.

As of the price of these editions, there were news sources which stated that Microsoft leaked information regarding the pricing, but the rumors proved to be untrue and the information were retracted.
At the moment it hears that Windows 7 will cost the same as Windows Vista when it appeared, at least that’s what Microsoft insiders said on the PDC 2008 (Professional Developer Conference)

Windows 7 – Vista Dual Boot

Even though some myths say that dual booting Windows 7 with Windows Vista is impossible, the developer machine we use has been set up to feature 3 different operating systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. That’s actually triple boot.

So, how to achieve a Windows 7- Windows Vista dual-boot?

The process is fairly simple, even though it’s a bit time consuming. Basically you can’t do anything wrong at any of the steps, but the first when you have to create each OS’s partition. Let’s see step by step.

Setting up the first OS and partition

Please note that we recommend using a hard disk with at least 20 GB of storage capacity to ensure each operating system will have sufficient space for its temporary files both while setup and after setup.
Also note that the way we describe will delete all your data on the hard disk. Backup everything you want to save.

Insert the oldest OS’s bootable DVD in the DVD reader, enter BIOS and set the PC to boot from the CD/DVD drive.
When you enter setup and arrived to the step when you have to choose the drive you want to install Vista on, select the drive, then Delete the primary partition. Next create a partition which has at least 7 GB of storage space. Format it (preferably NT file system) and proceed with the setup. When the first round of setup has finished and the setup restarted the PC, enter BIOS again and switch the boot sequence to first boot from the hard disk you wish to install the OSes on. Restart and finish Vista’s installation.

Setting up the second OS: Windows 7

When Vista has been installed and you were able to see the desktop, restart the PC from the start-menu. Enter the BIOS again and set the boot sequence to first try to boot from the CD/DVD drive (again). Insert the Windows 7 DVD in the DVD drive, and start the installing process.
When you arrived to the step when you have to choose the partition you want to install Windows 7 on, choose the un-partitioned space. Select the partition’s size, always remember that the operating system will need a lot of free space to function properly, choose wisely how much you want to sacrifice for Windows 7. Then format the new partition and proceed further with install.
Upon the first restart, change the boot sequence back to first try to boot from the hard disk you installed the operating systems on, restart again and finish with setup.

As you see this process is rather time consuming than complicated. And definitely not impossible to do.

When Windows Live Writer messes up the HTML…

This happened to me as soon as I installed Windows Live Writer. It came with Windows Live Mail, and sincerely I had no idea that a Microsoft program can successfully communicate with an open-source web application, neither knew about remote publishing programs, so I was very curious. Yes, I know, am ignorant. Then I installed it from the Windows Live Mail distribution as Windows Live Writer comes bundled in this package.

During install, I was told that it can’t connect to DevOracles. “AHA”, I though, this was the first error. But it also told me that I have to enable the XML-RPC publishing protocol in WordPress and that will solve my issue. So I enabled it, what could I loose.

The user interface of Windows Live Writer is extremely simple: after I’ve set up the blog’s settings, I went ahead and tried to save a draft on the blog to see how it will look like. And for my shock, this is what I saw: <skip to resolution>

p align=”center”>Some text, strong>now in bold/strong> and finally an em>emphasis/em>/p>

Well, apparently something messed up the HTML. That’s a huge problem! Immediately I tried to post to another blog on a GoDaddy server, there worked fine. So I knew that the problem is with the DevOracles server and NOT with Windows Live Writer. I tried to search on the net for some info, but all I found were posts where people complained about Windows Live Writer and how it messed up their blog or posts.

But if they would’ve knew what I knew… Let’s think a bit: the XML remote publishing protocol uses, well, some XML library to post to the blog. There has to be a working XML library else my draft wouldn’t have been saved on the blog. But my HTML has been messed up… Likely there’s either a security setting on the server set too high and it strips the HTML or there’s a bug in the XML library which is used to parse the data sent by Windows Live Writer.

What can it be? First which came into my mind is the security settings of the DevOracles servers, then that WordPress is a PHP application, which can make use of an XML library.

Step by step: I reviewed the security settings, everything seemed to be normal and there was no reference to XML. Checked.

Next step is PHP. We were using 5.2.6, at the time of this post 5.2.8 is out, so I thought as soon as I find the bug I will also upgrade PHP.

Last step: RPMs, Apache modules and PHP libraries. And what I found, made myself to feel as tiny as a flea: libXML wasn’t bundled in PHP.

So, how to fix the broken HTML issue of Windows Live Writer: You have to rebuild PHP with libXML. If you are a pro, then compile the latest PHP stable release with libxml from the command line, else make use of WHM and Easy Apache. If you’re on a hosting plan, ask your host politely to recompile PHP with libXML.

This post is published using Windows Live Writer. And I love it …

No native mail client on Windows 7 – What now?

There is one issue with Windows 7. Better said Windows 7 reported only one issue during install and that was that

Windows Mail is no longer included in Windows; however your e-mail files and settings will still be available after the upgrade. To send and receive e-mail you will need to install a new e-mail program. You can get e-mail programs from other software manufacturers or from the Microsoft website.

For some reason, when a Microsoft operating system tells me that my settings and files will be preserved, I tend to just not believe it. >Skip to resolution <

After install, the first thing I was checking is whether there is some native software which can be used as mail client or I will really have to install a third-party app. It doesn’t have anything. Cool. The second thing was to check whether my files and settings were preserved. Usually Outlook stores these files either in the Windows directory in a hidden system folder or if I’m lucky, then in my user folder, again in a hidden system folder. OK, these folders were gone after install. I was on the point of throwing out the PC on the window with Windows 7 altogether. Since I needed an email client, after all the above things was that I choose an open-source, client: ThunderBird. Installed it, then tried to import the settings from the previous mail client; nonetheless to say that without any luck. Tried to search on Google about some info regarding what should I do. Without any luck… So I went to Microsoft and searched there. Nothing.

Then when browsing through the MS pages, I saw a link: Windows Live Mail. Went ahead and downloaded it.

During install it offered me to install amongst many things a toolbar for IE8, no thanks. Windows Movie Maker, I have Adobe Premiere, sorry. I ticked out all the boxes and selected only mail. And after install I was the most surprised man in the world: it imported everything from the old Windows Mail: passwords, filters, mails, saved mails, accounts, everything. So, if you need a mail client which will know how to import your old settings, I really advice you to download Windows Live Mail.

If you want my opinion about Windows Live Mail, it’s the same as my opinion about Windows 7: it rocks. Honest. It’s way faster than its predecessors and it brings some innovative ideas both in design and features.

Installing Apache 2.2 on Windows 7 (beta)

I know, I know. Why would anyone want to install Apache on a beta operating system. But why not? I installed because I was interested whether Apache works on Windows 7 or not . And it does work.

I chose this time the already compiled version, coming with MSI installer, I advice you the same. Let’s see the install process step by step:

1. Go to Apache Download Page and grab one of the Windows binary versions
2. Run the downloaded installer
3. From Start>>All Programs>>Accessories open the Command Prompt
4. Now switch to the Apache’s bin directory by typing
   cd c:\progra~1\apache~1\apache2.2\bin\
5. We want now to fire up the Apache service. Type httpd.exe -k install and you should see something like this:
   
   
   Before you panic, the error message means that we don’t have privilege to access the Service Manager. This annoyance is part of the security measures taken by Windows 7 (and Vista) which blocks the user to take actions which may potentially harm the operating system. To fix it, type exit in the Windows 7 command prompt and read further.
6. Click Start and you should see the Command Prompt shortcut pinned to the quick menu. Right click it and select Run as administrator
7. Now let’s switch to the Apache Bin directory again by typing
   cd c:\progra~1\apache~1\apache2.2\bin\
8. type: httpd.exe -k install and you should see this:
   
9. Open up the httpd.conf with Notepad, change the Listen variable to Listen 127.0.0.1:8080 and the ServerName variable to ServerName localhost:8080, as shown below.
   
   
   This way you will be able to access your HTTP server both typing localhost:8080 and 127.0.0.1:8080 in the address bar.
   If you would like to use just simple plain ‘localhost’ and 127.0.0.1, change the Listen variable to Listen 127.0.0.1:80 and the ServerName variable to ServerName localhost:80
10. From Notepad’s File menu select Save As…, choose the Desktop (Important) as Save as location and change the Save As Type option to All files. Name your file httpd.conf and hit save
    
11. Now enter My Compute>>C: (or the drive where Apache is installed)>>Program Files>>Apache Software Foundation>>Apache2.x>>conf . Leave the window open cos we will need it, minimize all other windows and drag the httpd.conf you saved on the Desktop to the one you just opened. Hit Move and Replace, hit continue and finish the move.
12. Back to the Command Prompt. If you closed it previously, change the path to the Apache2.x\bin and type httpd.exe -k start.
13. As a final step, let’s see if we succeeded. Start up your favorite browser and type in the address bar localhost:8080 (respectively only localhost). If you see something like this, you just managed to get Apache working on Windows 7
    

Questions? Ask below…