xampp - How do I free my port 80 on localhost Windows?

Question

I installed XAMPP 1.6.8 and for some reason it didn't work. Later realized port 80 is not free or not listening. How can I release it or make it free?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

That agony has been solved for me. I found out that what was taking over port 80 is http api service. I wrote in cmd:

net stop http

Asked me "The following services will be stopped, do you want to continue?" Pressed y

It stopped a number of services actually.

Then wrote localhost and wallah, Apache is up and running on port 80.
Hope this helps

Important: Skype uses port 80 by default, you can change this in skype options > advanced > connection - and uncheck "use port 80"