Testing server locally?

Want to set it up on my XP machine

[balinor]

Hi all, I'm in the process of teaching myself PHP and MySQL and have come across some installation kits that come with PHP, Apache and MySQL. I don't do my own web hosting so I would like to learn it locally before I start eating up disk space and bandwidth on an actual hosted site. My question is, if I install one of these kits (PHP Triad, FoxSERV, EasyPHP etc) on my XP machine, will it work? Will it interfere with other applications? Will Dreamweaver etc view it as a 'real' webserver? Just don't want to install something that could cause more harm than good. Thanks for the help!

[leoo24]

i can voucher for easyphp, it works like a charm, i had problems running phptriad, but no problems with easyphp.
It doesnt intefer with anything, you have the easyphp folder that contains a www folder in which you put your site, fire up easyphp, go to phpmyadmin setup up your database and the click on 'local web' and away you go! :)