How do I setup Tomcat on a Windows XP Professional

I am using Windows Professional, and I have IIS installed. I am reading the book titled Head First Servlets and JSP.

I downloaded the jdk and set the class path and I download jakarta tomcat and set the class path as the book describes.

I then restarted the computer. After starting the tomcat server I tried both http://localhost:8080/ and http://127.0.0.1:8080/ and neither page works.

I read through different sites and some mention turning off IIS and setting up Apache as the web server. Other sites describe setting up IIS to work with Tomcat. I am not sure if I need to do either as the Head First Servlets and JSP book does not detail this step. I would appreciate some advice on which path to choose (intalling apache to work with tomcat or setting up iis to work with tomcat) and details on how to set up tomcat.

Thanks, Frank-

I think you need to set JAVA_HOME properly.
See this link:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Set+JAVA_HOME+variable+in+Windows

Once that is done, unzip tomcat in any directory, and through the command line, go to:
C:\Apache\apache-tomcat-5.5.23\bin
and then type : startup

This should start the server and your localhost:8080 should work.
[ August 05, 2007: Message edited by: v ray ]

Welcome to JavaRanch.

Neither Apache nor IIS are needed to work with Tomcat. If you're chiefly interested in Tomcat's ability to run Java web-apps, then I'd advise not to install Apache - it just complicates things. You can leave IIS running, but you need to ensure that it uses a different port than Tomcat.

If IIS is set up on port 8080, you can have Tomcat use a different one. Look through the %TOMCAT_HOME%/conf/server.xml file for mentions or "8080", and change them appropriately.

Hello Ulf Dittmer,

Which port should I change it to? I tried port 9090 but that did not work.

I wanted to add that I downloaded and ran the following executable to install Tomcat apache-tomcat-5.5.23.exe for Windows XP. I believe this is valid.

V ray mentioned running the following on the command line, :C:\Apache\apache-tomcat-5.5.23\bin
and then type : startup"

Can I use the tomcat version that I have or do I need to download a different version? Thank You-

but that did not work.

What does that mean? What happens when run the "startup" script? Is the TOMCAT_HOME environment variable set correctly?

The executable you have should work fine, as should using port 9090.