I just did a clean install of xampp and all went well. I should also say first install ever (like you can't figure that out from the question). I copied a site I am working on over to C:\xampp\htdocs\domaindirectory where domaindirectory is the name I gave the folder for the site. My links were working on a real server, public_html/directory took me to the right place. On localhost it wants to take me to localhost/directory name not localhost/domaindirectory/directory. What am I doing wrong? Advice or links, they are both good.
Your Links in the pages are probably "/directory" and not "directory". The URL "/" in your localhost is C:\xampp\htdocs\ and not C:\xampp\htdocs\domaindirectory