Opening Up Port 80 For Apache to Use On Windows

For Apache to be able to start/run, it has to be able to bind to (and listen on) port 80 (the HTTP port).

If after installing Apache (or a WAMP such as WampDeveloper Pro), rebooting, and trying to start Apache again – Apache is not able to bind to port 80 and start, then another Application or Service has already taken this port.

For Apache to start, we have to figure out what’s using port 80 (and possibly port 443) on your system, and stop and disable it.

Known Windows Services That Listen on Port 80

From Services Manager (run: services.msc), stop and disable these Windows Services which are known to bind to port 80.

Double click Service, and change ‘Startup Type’ to ‘Disabled’…

  1. SQL Server Reporting Services (ReportServer)
  2. Web Deployment Agent Service (MsDepSvc)
  3. BranchCache (PeerDistSvc)
  4. Sync Share Service (SyncShareSvc)
  5. World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC)
  6. Internet Information Server (WAS, IISADMIN)

You might, or might not, have some of these Services installed and running.

These services are not needed for normal Windows functionality, and can be safely disabled.

HTTP (HTTP.SYS) Hidden Driver/Service

Windows Server 2003/2008/2012 and Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7/8/10 comes with an HTTP front-end proxy service who’s job is to parse and forward incoming HTTP requests to other Services.

Values in URL “http://hostname:port/virtual_url_or_dir” are registered with it, and when an HTTP request comes in that matches on those values, that request gets routed to the other application or service (which itself is running on a different port).

HTTP.SYS is usually started “on demand” by other services (Windows Remote Management, Print Spooler, etc), and is not usually listening on port 80 until some other application registers a HOST (127.0.0.1) + PORT (80) + virtual URL/DIR with it. HTTP.SYS runs under PID 4 (NT Kernel).

On some Windows systems, oftentimes port 80 is already taken by HTTP.SYS for use.

Show Reserved URLs:

netsh http show urlacl

Show active Registered URLs:

netsh http show servicestate

To Disable HTTP.SYS:

Control Panel > Device Manager
In menu View, select: Show hidden devices
Open tree: Non-plug and Play Drivers
Double-click: HTTP
Tab Driver - Group Startup
Switch from: Demand to Disabled

Or run this from the administrative privledged command-line (right click cmd.exe, select – run as admin):

net stop http /y
sc config http start= disabled

Other Web-Server Applications

Make sure you’re not running:
A. Other instances of Apache
B. IIS and/or WebMatrix
C. Tomcat

IIS and Tomcat are web-server applications that also bind to port 80 by default.

IIS can be removed via Windows Features on Vista/7/8/10, or on Windows Server via Role and Components Removal.

Skype

Skype usually takes up ports 80 and 443.

You’d need to stop Skype and change its settings to not use these ports:

Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection
Uncheck "Use Port 80 and 443 for incoming connections"

Or set Apache’s Startup type as “Automatic”, this way Apache might start before Skype does, and will be able to bind to port 80 and 443 before any other application has a chance to take these ports.

* Skype for Windows 8 (Modern UI) is not able to change port numbers. Only “Skype for Desktop” can do this.

TeamViewer

Check both Tasks Manager (Processes Tab – click ‘Show processes from all users’) and Services Manager to see if you have “TeamViewer” running… This process or service waits several minutes after computer start-up, and then takes port 80 if it’s available. If present, you should stop and disable it too, or configure it not to use port 80…

Disable TeamViewer from using port 80:

Extras > Options > Advanced
Enable option "Don't use incoming port 80"

Windows Work Folders

Under Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8, Microsoft has introduced a new feature called “Work Folders”, that synchronizes files/folders between different machines.

By default, “Work Folders” uses ports 80 and 443!

There are 3 options to get around this, from simplest to more difficult…

A) Disable the Windows ‘Sync Share Service’, named “SyncShareSvc”.

B) Remove/ “Work Folders” Server Role / Windows Feature:

Launch Server Manager. Click "Add roles and features".
Server Roles -> File and Storage Services -> File and iSCSI Services -> Work Folders

C) Or change the ports “Work Folders” use:

Edit file:
C:\Windows\System32\SyncShareSvc.config

Change ports from 80 to 11180 and 443 to 11443 (or something else)…

<sites>
...
    <bindings>
        <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:80:" />
        <binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:443:" sslFlags="0" />
...

Then from a permissions-elevated command-line (right click cmd.exe, Run as admin), run:

Netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:11180/ user="NT Authority\LOCAL SERVICE"
Netsh http add urlacl url=https://*:11443/ user="NT Authority\LOCAL SERVICE"

You’ll also need to follow more instructions here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2013/10/15/windows-server-2012-r2-resolving-port-conflict-with-iis-websites-and-work-folders.aspx
http://kylejwx.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/work-folders-on-windows-server-2012-r2-essentials/

VMware Host Agent service

The VMware Host Agent service uses TCP ports 80 and 443 by default.

Edit > Preferences > Shared VMs
Change the ports

VMware, Configure Virtual Machine Sharing and Remote Access

Use NETSTAT to Detect Port 80 Listeners

Open the command line (System tab, button: Command Line) and run:

netstat -o -n -a | findstr 0.0.0.0:80
netstat -o -n -a | findstr 127.0.0.1:80

Inspect the lines with a “Local Address” showing port 80 and/or 443 in use. Note the PID number. Then open Task Manager (run: taskmgr.exe), and in Processes tab, see if you can find the application with that same PID number. This app needs to be shut down. If you don’t see it, click “Show processes from all users” button.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281336

On newer Windows versions you can get the application name directly by using netstat’s ‘-b’ option:

-b    Displays the executable involved in creating each connection or
      listening port. In some cases well-known executables host
      multiple independent components, and in these cases the
      sequence of components involved in creating the connection
      or listening port is displayed. In this case the executable
      name is in [] at the bottom, on top is the component it called,
      and so forth until TCP/IP was reached. Note that this option
      can be time-consuming and will fail unless you have sufficient
      permissions.

56 thoughts on “Opening Up Port 80 For Apache to Use On Windows”

  1. Thank you!! Your list of Windows services is the most comprehensive I’ve found! It was the SQL Report Service that did it for me. Wasted 24 hours tracking this down. Thank you!!

    Reply

    1. Hello, Thanks for best and very comprehensive article on port 80, it was really very hard for me to find out how to fix this problem, and it was the sql server reporting service which made the problem for me. :) thanks

      Reply

  3. Awesome!!! I had disabled IIS services from windows 8 but port 80 was still in use by some pid 4 system process. Turns out that the Web Deployment Agent Service (MsDepSvc) was running and set to turn on automatically. I disabled startup and stopped service – apache is backup and running :) thanks

    Reply

  4. When all else fails to uncover the application that is using port 80, try communicating with it to see what information it outputs…

    1. Install PuTTY, which can communicate via telnet protocol.

    2. Open Session with the following settings:

    Host Name: 127.0.0.1
Connection type: Telnet
Port: 80
Close window on exit: Never

    Click – Open.

    3. Type in:

    GET / HTTP/1.1
    HOST: localhost

    Press enter key again.

    If the culprit is a web application / server, it might give up it’s details, or provide clues to you.

    Reply

  7. I install cacti on windows server 2012.

    Cacti was abundle programs comes builtin with Apach (Apache+php+Mysql).

    After installation, I just enable:
    1. Ping
    2. create a inbound firewall rule to allow port 80 and since i just wanted it to be accessed under domain so I check domain options only.

    It works without headache.

    Thanks
    Rico

    Reply

  9. Thank you so much. I installed a program that installed SQL server 2008 alongside it and killed my xampp install. Wasted an hour on this. Thanks again.

    Reply

  11. Very nice comprehensive rundown. Many of the other pages I’ve spent the past several hours looking at treat it as though there’s one cause or are very confused. This was the (happy) end of my search for a solution.

    http.sys turned out to be the issue for me. However, worth noting that the Control Panel interactions described are not valid for win 8.1, which apparently will not permit you to see the ‘non-plug and play drivers’ tree. I wasn’t able to see http.sys through any of the GUI consoles, even after running as administrator. Needed to use the command line.

    Reply

  15. Thanks about your useful article.
    I follow it and remove some process but a process still listening on 80 port that its address is [::]:80 that is on PID 4.
    Please tell me to remove it.
    Thanks

    Reply

  16. Thank you very very much

    Finally i was able to run Apache on port 80 successfully, i spent a lot of time and almost gave up unable to fine working solution, after disabling “Web Deployment Agent Service” it worked perfectly :)

    Reply

  21. Thank you so much for all of your different solutions. After trying to resolve my ‘Port 80′ problem for the better part of 2 days, I finally found out what the culprit was using netsh http show urlacl


    Reserved URL : http://+:80/FilpWifiPowerManager.svc/
    User: \Everyone
    Listen: Yes
    Delegate: No
    SDDL: D:(A;;GX;;;WD)

    I have an Asus 2 in 1 laptop and their Flip Lock service attaches itself to Port 80. Simply disabled the service and everything works now.

    Reply

    2. Nick W I had the same issue with my Asus Laptop,

      In windows you can get information about the ports that are being used by some aplicacions with this commands: netstat -ao netsh http show urlacl

      The Service Asus Flip Service by default uses port 80, is you stop the service it will release the port, but if you turn your laptop into the tablet mode the screen won’t rotate

      So if you want to use Asus Flip Service and release port 80 you could change the Web Service Port that is being used, I changed the port to 800

      What I did is to go to the directory where the app is installed and change the config files

      Director: C:\Program Files\ASUS\ASUS FlipLock

      The config files that I changed are:

      FlipController.exe.config

      ReStoreWifiPower.exe.config

      WifiPowerManager.exe.config


      Reply

  28. Just like to thank you for this post. Was trying to get WP DesktopServer to install and kept on getting an error saying that it was likely WAMP or IIS running on port 80 but blocked the installation from completing. They have the Skype issue indicated on their site but it was by disabling http.sys that I was able to install it OK. Thanks again for taking the time to write this up lost nearly hour before finding this post… :)

    John

    Reply

  29. Just wanted to add, as the above comment may be slightly misleading, when installing DesktopServer for WP on another machine, you do still have to follow the principle of going into the advanced options of Skype and prevent it from using port 80 (also 443 is included in the same option you can’t choose either or) and then the http.sys above command as well (if the Skype option alone doesn’t work).

    Reply

  31. Windows 10 runs a “World Wide Web Publishing Service” on port 80. Start service.msc. Scroll down to find “World Wide Web Publishing Service” and stop it. You might also want to change it’s Startup property to “manual.”

    Reply

  32. Thanks!!! It was Web Deployment Agent Service (MsDepSvc) for me. I think that came from a previous install of trying to use Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer (just a hunch?).

    Reply

  35. Thank you very much for gathering all this useful info in one place! Very good resource.

    For me it was the BranchCache (PeerDistSvc) that was causing the problem. Took me 4 hours to find it…

    Reply

  37. Thank you so much for you help!
    My Apache was not working and I’ve just stopped the BranchCache service and now everything is alright!

    Cheers

    Reply

  40. Hi,
    Thank you so much. It was “World Wide Web Publishing Service” which was blocking this.
    I have wasted more than 72 hours to find this solution. Thanks.

    Reply

  42. The following error was encountered while trying to retrieve the URL: http://localhost:83/

    Access Denied.

    Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect.

    Your cache administrator is root.

    Reply

  43. Hi, I have no services running on port 80 ( checked by using netstat -o -n -a | findstr 0.0.0.0:80 and netstat -o -n -a | findstr 127.0.0.1:80). It didn’t show anything. But still I can’t able to connect to port 80. Please help me with this.

    Reply

  46. Awesome. My culprit was SQL Server Reporting Services (ReportServer). I have been trying for sometime now. Thanks loads :)

    Reply

  49. It is surprising to me that Windows programs need to changed to use another port, but I did not see any comment of configuring Apache to use another port (ex 8080)?
    Why?

    Reply

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