XAMPP’s Apache uses port 80 by default and this can clash with other internet applications such as web servers (TomCat, JBoss etc), Skype, JDownloader (which all happens to use port 80 as well by default).

Since windows allocate these ports to applications at a first come first serve basis, your Apache web server might not be responsive (as it was started later than the other internet applications) and give you this dreaded message quoting

…server is taking too long to respond

The easiest way to fix this is to change Apache server port settings: