WAMP 403 Forbidden message on Windows 7

For me the inclusion of "Require local" helped to solve Error 403. The alias config file looks like this:

Alias /mytest/ "C:/mytest/" 

<Directory "C:/mytest/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride all
        Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    Require local
</Directory>

The access to your Apache server is forbidden from addresses other than 127.0.0.1 in httpd.conf (Apache's config file) :

<Directory "c:/wamp/www/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride all
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>

The same goes for your PHPMyAdmin access, the config file is phpmyadmin.conf :

<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>

You can set them to allow connections from all IP addresses like follows :

AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

The solution for changing the permissions in the httpd.conf will work if you are OK with providing access to the WAMP server from outside.

If you do not want to do that then all you have to do is tell windows that the "localhost" domain points to 127.0.0.1. You can do that by editing the hosts file in your system directory.

The file is placed at : C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

by default windows 7 ships with :

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#   127.0.0.1       localhost
#   ::1             localhost

You have to un-comment the mapping for localhost:

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
127.0.0.1       localhost
#   ::1         localhost

Note: you will not be able to edit the hosts file as its a read-only file. To edit, you have to be the administrator, copy the file to some other location, edit it and then copy it back to the etc directory.

I do not recommend the change of the hosts file. Use the permissions of httpd.conf file. use the hosts file approach only if you do not want the server accessed from outside.

I found a simpler fix...

Although the icon was green WAMP still needs to be "Put Online" (last item of menu when left-clicking icon).

After that I had access as normal.