For me, the answer was this:
Answer
You need to close xampp program first, then go and right click the xampp_start.exe and xampp-control.exe files in the xampp directory, selecting "properties", then check "Run as administrator" in the "Compatibility" tab. You should run xampp then and click the red buttons (X) to activate as services (Apache and Mysql). As I said, that did the magic for me.
