How do I free my port 80 on localhost Windows?

Question

I installed XAMPP 1.6.8 and for some reason it didn\'t work. Later realized port 80 is not free or not listening. How can I release it or make it free?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

I was trying to install nginx from here - http://nginx.org/en/docs/windows.html

Going to http://localhost/ will show something, at least a proper "not found" message
This is because 80 is the default port, and it was taken by other processes.

Now run below command:

net stop http

    // Above command stopped below services  
    // - SSDP Discovery  
    // - Print Spooler  
    // - BranchCache  
    // - Function Discovery Resource Publication  
    // - Function Discovery Provider Host  

Now, going to http://localhost/ will fail with a broken link page message.

Main process was BranchCache
This process, after stopped, will restart in a few seconds.
So we need to run other commands we need soon, an example below:

// this will stop
net stop http

// immeidately run other command you want to
start nginx

Now, going to http://localhost/ gave me:

Welcome to nginx!

Hope that helps.