Somewhere around Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:16:30 -0800, while reading
comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows, I think I thought I saw this post
from Purl Gurl <purlgurl@purlgurl.net>:
.. . .
>
>Most often an inability to connect to localhost is related to
>a firewall configuration; requests to port 80 are being blocked.
>
>Next most often is running two programs both wanting to bind
>port 80, such as running both IIS and Apache.
>
I didn't exactly find out why I had the problem, but unfortunately, I may
never find out.

I installed the same thing on another XP SP2 machine, without a lot of extra
stuff installed, standard firewall settings, and it worked right off, so I
know I was doing it correctly.

So, I started uninstalling things on my other system that I didn't need
right away, like Google desktop, internet download manager, ...

I rebooted and my networking was completely gone. Then, a windows popped up
from security saying my system was shutting down in 1 minute, very similar
to some virus/worms that were going around a while back (sasser, etc). But,
I do auto updates, have NAV running all the time, and generally keep an eye
out for unusual activity, so I don't think it was a virus, and it wasn't
exactly the same as anything I could find. Even in safe mode it did this,
and even after a repair/upgrade of XP, so I had to reinstall XP, and now it
works as it should. So, I'll never know what it was, I guess (I hope).

Thanks to all who tried to , though.

--
Marty - public.forums (at) gmail (dot) com
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...
well, I have others." - Groucho Marx