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So I picked up a laptop the other week and like any other technogeek I wanted to see if Apache would run on the version of Vista on the new computer. This version was Home Basic, but seemed to do the job. Here’s the steps I took to get it running:

NOTE: These instructions on for educational purposes only. I do not hold any responsibility for any fowl things that happen on your computer. I also don’t take responsibility for the fall of music sales due to file sharing networks. Please make sure you have admin rights on Vista before you start.

1. Grab a copy of the Apache installer apache_2.2.4-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi. I downloaded to a directory I could easily navigate to in the Command Prompt (see step 3). I saved it in c:\setup.
2. Turn off the User Access Control (UAC) in Vista. If you’ve used Vista for 25 minutes you’ve come across it. That’s the program that keeps asking you if it’s OK to install a program, or delete a file, or take a leak (OK maybe not the last one). Here’s how to do that:
1. Start > Control Panel
2. User Accounts
3. Click “Turn User Accounts Control on or off”
4. Uncheck “Use User Account Control”
5. Click OK
6. Restart Windows (this one’s important).
3. Once you’ve rebooted head over to “Command Prompt” and run it as Administrator. In my time with Vista I’ve found that going to Start->Search and typing in “Command Prompt” works. Now right click on the shortcut and select “Run As Administrator”.
4. Now navigate to the directory you’ve saved the .msi file to.
5. Type in “apache_2.2.4-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi” and let the installer do it’s thing. You will be prompted to put in some data, but that can be changed in the httpd.conf file later.
6. Windows will try to block port 80 (the default port) for Apache. When prompted by Windows Firewall say “Unblock”.
7. By default Apache will run pages out of the “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs” folder. If you want to change this, like I did, create a new directory on your PC (I used C:\www\) copy all of the files in the “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\” directory on move it to your desired directory.
8. Now open up the file called “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf” in a plain text editor.
9. For the sake of speed I used a “Replace All” function to change all my settings. Replace “Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2″ with “your_directory“. Again I used “www”.
10. Now head to your directory and open the file in “your_directory\index.html” in a plain text editor. Where it says “It Works!” change it to read something else.
11. Although you can restart Apache in the Vista Program Menu I just decided to restart the computer. Heck, I had 15 updates running before I had to reboot anyway. This one’s your choice.
12. Open up a web browser and type in “localhost” in the address bar. The text you changed “It Works!” to should now be showing.
13. Sit back and relax. While your doing that, think of some more devious things you will be doing after you get this running.

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written by tom