http://localhost/ not working on Windows 7. What's the problem?

Question

I have a big problem opening http://localhost/ on Windows 7 (beta). I installed this os and everything went great; when I installed Wamp I saw that localhost is not working at all. I just see this error:

Failed to Connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at localhost.

in Mozilla and Explorer.

I removed Wamp and after some weeks (that means two weeks from today) I installed NetBeans on Windows 7. I created a test PHP script and when I debug it, I get the same error again. I tried to access it with ip 127.... but still the same. What is the problem?
When i installed NetBeans I installed it in port 8080.

Answer 1

If you installed it on port 8080, you need to access it on port 8080:

http://localhost:8080 or http://127.0.0.1:8080

Answer 2

To fix the port 80 problem do:

From cmd as administrator:

1. sc config http start= demand (you need a space after the equal sign and not before)
2. Reboot
3. Run the command (netsh http show servicestate) as administrator to check that the port 80 is in use

After you have run this command, you can disable http.sys as follows:

1. net stop http (stop the process)
2. Sc config http start= disabled (if you want to disable the service forever)

it works for me.