So, I'm helping install Apache on a friend's computer. He's running Windows XP SP1, and Apache has a very nice page describing how to install on Windows. A few issues did arise, however.
1. I encountered the following error message on the initial startup of the web server:
[Tue Jun 15 23:09:11 2004] [error] (OS 10038)An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket. : Child 4672: Encountered too many errors accepting client connections. Possible causes: dynamic address renewal, or incompatible VPN or firewall software. Try using the Win32DisableAcceptEx directive.
I read a few posts online that suggested I could just follow the instructions--I did and just added the Win32DisableAcceptEx directive to the bottom of the httpd.conf file. A restart, and now localhost shows up in a web browser.
2. Configuration issues: My friend also has a firewall on his computer (good idea). I had to configure the firewall to allow Apache to receive packets, and respond to them. Also, I had to configure the gateway (my friend shares a few computers behind one fast internet connection) to forward the port that external clients can request information from to the computer on which Apache was running. Voila, now I can view the default index.html page using his IP address.
3. However, the biggest hurdle is yet to come. My friend wants to server some files off one of his hard drives (a different one than Apache is installed upon). No problem on unix, just create a symlink. On windows, I can use a shortcut, right? Just like a symlink, they "...can point to a file on your computer or a file on a network server."
Well, not quite. Shortcuts have a .lnk extension, and Apache doesn't know how to deal with that, other than to serve it up as a file. I did a fair bit of searching, but the only thing I found on dealing with this issue was this link which basically says you should just reconfigure Apache to have its DocRoot be the directory which contains whatever files you'd like to serve up. Ugh.
However, the best solution is to create an Alias (which has helped me in the past) to the directories you're interested in serving up. And now my friend has Apache, installed properly as a service, to play around with as well.