Solving TCP port problems with XAMPP and SkypeTCP Port Probleme mit XAMPP und Skype lösen

Recently I tried to run a portable version of XAMPP for a local testing environment in combination with Adobe Dreamweaver and wordpress. Unfortunately I could not start the Apache server from the XAMPP control panel. The little green “running” sign appeared for about two seconds and then disappeared again. Also the XAMPP start page did not work. When I tried to use the start script, the prompt told me:

make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:443 no listening sockets available, shutting down

meaning, that the TCP port 443 was allready in use by another aplication. But since I did not install any other server software, I was confused which program would dare to occupy the standard https port… A quick google search helped me to figure out some “command prompt magic” to find the delinquent. The command

netstat -ano | findstr :443

returned

TCP 0.0.0.0:443 0.0.0.0:0 LISTEN 5104

which helped me to find the process ID of the program using port 443, in this case 5104. But since this PID number did not show up in the windows task manager (which scared me a little bit), I again did some googling and found the tasklist command:

tasklist | findstr 5104

revealed that Skype.exe was responsible for the “port occupation”. So I opened up Skype and started looking for reasons. Under “Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection” I found a checkbox labled “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections”… I unchecked it, restarted skype, et voilà: XAMPP worked like a charm!

Skype setting to use TCP ports 80 and 443
Skype setting to use TCP ports 80 and 443

Hope this helps you (and me again) sometimes… Cheers, TobiSorry, aber davon gibt es derzeit (noch!) keine deutsche Version…

Recently I tried to run a portable version of XAMPP for a local testing environment in combination with Adobe Dreamweaver and wordpress. Unfortunately I could not start the Apache server from the XAMPP control panel. The little green “running” sign appeared for about two seconds and then disappeared again. Also the XAMPP start page did not work. When I tried to use the start script, the prompt told me:

make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:443 no listening sockets available, shutting down

meaning, that the TCP port 443 was allready in use by another aplication. But since I did not install any other server software, I was confused which program would dare to occupy the standard https port… A quick google search helped me to figure out some “command prompt magic” to find the delinquent. The command

netstat -ano | findstr :443

returned

TCP 0.0.0.0:443 0.0.0.0:0 LISTEN 5104

which helped me to find the process ID of the program using port 443, in this case 5104. But since this PID number did not show up in the windows task manager (which scared me a little bit), I again did some googling and found the tasklist command:

tasklist | findstr 5104

revealed that Skype.exe was responsible for the “port occupation”. So I opened up Skype and started looking for reasons. Under “Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection” I found a checkbox labled “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections”… I unchecked it, restarted skype, et voilà: XAMPP worked like a charm!

Skype setting to use TCP ports 80 and 443
Skype setting to use TCP ports 80 and 443

Hope this helps you (and me again) sometimes… Cheers, Tobi

Get Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 very cheap

Just a quick tip for all those people out there who don’t use Lightroom yet

With the upcoming release of Lightroom 4 (it is being beta-tested at the moment), now is a very good time to get started with it (Lightroom I mean)!
You can get Lightroom 3 for about 120 Euros at the moment (for example at Amazon)! That is about 60% cheaper than the regular 300 bucks you have to pay for the full version.

I thought we were talking about buying Lightroom 4 not Version 3!

I was just getting there: Even if you buy the update to Lightroom 4 later on, you still can expect to get away way cheaper than buying the full version for 300€. The upgrade from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3 costed about 90 Euros, so if we expect the upgrade prices to stay close to that, we’ll be able to get a full version of Lightroom 4 for about 210€ (120€ for Lightroom 3 and 90€ fot the upgrade to Version 4). That is about 90€ cheaper than the full version, if we presume the release price is the same as for Lightroom 3.

Summary

Ok, all those numbers can be confusing, so here’s the short version: if you are planning to buy Lightroom, buy version 3 now and an upgrade to version 4 later and you’ll save a lot of money!

Just a quick tip for all those people out there who don’t use Lightroom yet

With the upcoming release of Lightroom 4 (it is being beta-tested at the moment), now is a very good time to get started with it (Lightroom I mean)!
You can get Lightroom 3 for about 120 Euros at the moment (for example at Amazon)! That is about 60% cheaper than the regular 300 bucks you have to pay for the full version.

I thought we were talking about buying Lightroom 4 not Version 3!

I was just getting there: Even if you buy the update to Lightroom 4 later on, you still can expect to get away way cheaper than buying the full version for 300€. The upgrade from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3 costed about 90 Euros, so if we expect the upgrade prices to stay close to that, we’ll be able to get a full version of Lightroom 4 for about 210€ (120€ for Lightroom 3 and 90€ fot the upgrade to Version 4). That is about 90€ cheaper than the full version, if we presume the release price is the same as for Lightroom 3.

Summary

Ok, all those numbers can be confusing, so here’s the short version: if you are planning to buy Lightroom, buy version 3 now and an upgrade to version 4 later and you’ll save a lot of money!