Php – http://localhost/ not working on Windows 7. What’s the problem

Change the file content of c:\wamp\alias\phpmyadmin.conf to the following.

Note: You should set the Allow Directive to allow from your local machine for security purposes. The directive Allow from all is insecure and should be limited to your local machine.

<Directory "c:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.4.5/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride all
        Order Deny,Allow
        Allow from all
</Directory>

Here my WAMP installation is in the c:\wamp folder. Change it according to your installation.

Previously, it was like this:

<Directory "c:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.4.5/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride all
        Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>

Modern versions of Apache 2.2 and up will look for a IPv6 loopback instead of a IPv4 loopback (your localhost).

The real problem is that wamp is binding to an IPv6 address. The fix: just add Allow from ::1 - Tiberiu-Ionuț Stan

<Directory "c:/wamp22/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride all
        Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from localhost 127.0.0.1 ::1
</Directory>

This will allow only the local machine to access local apps for Apache.

Restart your Apache server after making these changes.

I had the same problem running on Windows 8 running on 64bit. Apache is really slow but when you press F5 many times it goes ok. In the end i after doing many things managed to solve it. Right now it works fast.

Try the following tasks to increase the performance:

Change apache's listening port

Change listening port from 80 to 8080 to avoid conflicts with programs like Skype. Open your httpd.conf file and find the line that starts with Listen (it's around line 62). Change it like the following: Listen 127.0.0.1:8080

Change your powerplan

Change your power plan from Balanced to High Performance. You can do this in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options

Disable IPv6

The credits of this particular task go to Jef where he pointed this out in his blog post. From the Windows 8 desktop, press the Windows Key and the R key at the same time

Type regedit in the Run dialog box and click OK

Use Registry Editor to expand the registry tree and browse to:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TCPIP6\Parameters

Right click on Parameters, expand New, and select DWORD (32-bit) Value

Enter DisabledComponents into the Name field

Double click on the new DisabledComponents value, enter ffffffff into the Value data dialog box, and click the OK button

Confirm the new registry value contains the required data.

Change your etc/hosts

If you use virtual hosts don't add each virtual host on a new line. Instead list them like the following. 127.0.0.1 site-a site-b site-c

I also added 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 since I heard this somehow improves the lookup as well. (Can't confirm this but it can't hurt putting it there)

Your hosts file is located at C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc

Check how many apache processes are running

In my case I had two apache processes running. Be sure you only have one running. You can check this by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL and press Task Manager

Turn off the Base Filtering Engine (BFE)

What I find to be working a bit as well was turning off the Base Filtering Engine. Since stopping or disabling the BFE service will significantly reduce the security of the system you should only do this when needed.

Go to Control Panel => Administrative Tools => Services => Base Filtering Engine

Stop the Base Filtering Engine by clicking on Stop

Increase Apache's process priority

To to your task manager and change Apache's process priority from Normal to High by right clicking -> Set priority -> High

Keep Apache's process busy

This is a bit of an ugly method but it does certainly work. It keeps Apache busy and will process your own requests faster. Insert your local web-address in the iframe location and save it in a html file, run it and just leave it there until you're done.

<html>
    <head>

<script>
setTimeout(function(){
   window.location.reload(1);
}, 2000);

</script>

</head>
<body>
<iframe name="iframe" id="iframe" src="http://mywebsite:8080"></iframe> 


</body>
</html>

Downgrade to Windows 7 Pro

As a Windows 8 Pro user you are entitled to have downgrade rights to Windows 7. Read here more about this. For me that was the only solution that really did the job properly.

Good luck!