title: XAMPP Can't Start Apache After Upgrading to PHP7.1.17 "Attempting to start Apache service..."
body: <p>I have XAMPP installed on Windows 7 virtual machine. My old PHP version was 7.0.9 with Apache 2.4</p>
  
  <p>I needed to upgrade the PHP version to 7.1.x and I set out reading about how to best to this. In end, I settled with the simple plan:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Stop Apache service</p></li>
  <li><p>Downloaded new PHP version from official php website. For PHP 7 the 7.1.17 version was listed. I downloaded the thread safe version, as my Apache has thread safety enabled. </p></li>
  <li><p>I extracted the contents of the downloaded archive to a folder. </p></li>
  <li><p>I copied and replaced all files in the appropriate folders from C:/Server/php with the new php version files from the extracted archive.</p></li>
  <li><p>I attempted to start Apache from the XAMPP control panel and the server will not start. </p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>The message "Attempting to start Apache service..." just hangs and nothing happens. </p>
  
  <p>The last entry in the error.log file in C:\Server\apache\logs shows the event when the server was stopped and that's it.</p>
  
  <p>When I check the php version from CLI with the command php -v, the console returns installed php version 7.1.17</p>
  
  <p>I tried different suggestions I read from similar questions, like changing ServerName localhost:80 to ServerName localhost:8080 and copying php7apache2.dll to apache/bin ( as suggested here: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2154762/upgrading-php-in-xampp-for-windows">Upgrading PHP in XAMPP for Windows?</a> ), alas the issue is not fixed and Apache does not start. </p>
  
  <p>Of course, I also restarted the virtual machine, all the same.</p>
  
  <p>At this point, I'm dumbfounded. Don't know what to do.</p>
  
  <p>I need to get Apache running with php 7.1, as it is required by Magento 2.2.4. I do not want to reinstall XAMPP, as this will be a lenghty process with a lot of risk for more things to go wrong. </p>
  
  <p>Any help is much appreciated! </p>