xampp problem

[grandpafred]

A few months ago I installed Xampp and it was working fine. I even installed a couple of CMS packages to play with and had no problem. So, I haven't done any php development in the past months but now have an opportunity to do so, and for some reason Xampp is no longer functioning :(
I haven't made any changes to the PC I'm using or to the Xampp install etc.
I shut down IIS in XP pro using command line
net stop iisadmin and net stop w3svc
I fired up Apache and Mysql via the Xampp control panel and they started without any errors... but the browser is not returning any php pages... unable to connect to localhost

I realize this is rather vague and there could be a plethora of variables but if you have any idea of where or what I should be looking at to start troubleshooting this I would be most grateful. If this was a "new" install that would be one thing, but this "has" worked in the past.
TIA

[grandpafred]

After fighting with it for a couple hours I un-installed and re-installed and it works as I would expect....
I would also expect that my "old" cms installations will no longer work since Xampp is now installed in c:\xampp and the previous install was in c:\program files\xampp
I did make a copy of the cms folder(s) and the associated data folders from the mysql folder from the original xampp install before uninstalling...