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

Answer 1

If you're still having this problem, try this:

1. Edit your hosts file (with elevated privileges)
2. Uncomment the line "#127.0.0.1 localhost" (ie- remove the #)
3. Save the file as is. hosts with no extension

In Win7 MS has decided to comment the localhost line with that msg that says it's handled in dns. I'm still not exactly clear what they're getting at, except maybe that they're telling folks to use dns for localhost resolution instead of the hosts file. Probably safer that way, anyway.