If you want to stop Apache you can do so multiple ways: From the command line (run cmd.exe): net stop Apache2.2 httpd -k stop Or via Services Panel: run services.msc I use WampDeveloper Pro, not Xampp, but that error message (-1) from a Apache Service usually means the configuration is bad. You can run a syntax check on httpd.conf (and included files) with: httpd -t