Hi Ric, Thanks for the reply. I tried changing the code as you described, un-installed and re-installed the services, but the Apache service still fails to start. The following entry is added to the system Application log: The Apache service named reported the following error: >>> (20024)The given path is misformatted or contained invalid characters: AH00532: Invalid config file path E:\\WampServer\\UniServer\\usr\\local\\apache2\\conf\\httpd.conf . For some reason, the backslashes in the path name seem to be doubling up ? N.B. The SQL service starts fine and I can run Apache on this machine "as a program" - it is just failing to start as a service. Did I need to do anything beyond re-installing the services or is there something else I am missing ? Many thanks Darrell