Unable to start apache server – port already in use
I faced this problem few months back and again few days back heard from some other person when i told him the resolution. This is not a very generic problem and not a generic solution but it is a situation.
Few months back, I was trying to setup my machine for testing and was installing Apache tomcat and Apache web server on my windows Xp machine. Installation went fine but when i tried to start Apache web server it did not start. I repeated my actions few times but it did not start. I looked into the log file and it was not saying anything specific.
I spent few minutes doing the same thing and was trying to diagnose the problem. After searching on internet i found that one reason could be that the port is already busy for running the apache web server. Apache web server uses port 80 by default for running the server and my guess was that it was already taken by some other application.
At that time i was not aware that i could figure it out by executing few commands on command line so searched few more minutes on internet and found that skype can be cause of this. I logged of skype and tried starting Apache web server and it worked 
“Skype takes port 80 for listening its communication if find it free. If you are trying to start Apache web server on same machine, log-off skype, run your webserver and the restart Skype.”
I tried to think about the reason why skype takes port 80 which is generally used by web servers like Apache webserver or Microsoft IIS. I could think one reason which suits for Skype like application. Skype is a p2p application which does require few super nodes present in its p2p network to locate other nodes. As super nodes require open access so that any node can contact them, port 80 is best port for it. Port 80 is generally not blocked and treated like a trusted port for http communication.
Skype might be using this advantage of port 80.
So next time your are stuck in starting apache web server on windows machine do check Skype application on that.
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