Basic Apache commands for a local Windows machine

Going back to absolute basics here. The answers on this page and a little googling have brought me to the following resolution to my issue. Steps to restart the apache service with Xampp installed:-

  1. Click the start button and type CMD (if on Windows Vista or later and Apache is installed as a service make sure this is an elevated command prompt)
  2. In the command window that appears type cd C:\xampp\apache\bin (the default installation path for Xampp)
  3. Then type httpd -k restart

I hope that this is of use to others just starting out with running a local Apache server.


For frequent uses of this command I found it easy to add the location of C:\xampp\apache\bin to the PATH. Use whatever directory you have this installed in.

Then you can run from any directory in command line:

httpd -k restart

The answer above that suggests httpd -k -restart is actually a typo. You can see the commands by running httpd /?