No offense to Apache Friends because I love XAMPP and have been using it for years. Something bigger is definitely going on here, because my Eclipse PDT 3.2 IDE was having trouble with Magento, too. Contrary to what you might think, from what I’ve read it looks like it’s actually Zend’s fault; specifically, the Zend Framework has revolutionized the way PHP programmers think and the way PHP5 web applications are written. Truly object-oriented! Imagine that. Even the highly acclaimed Drupal project [which I also love, don't get me wrong] is still 99.9% procedural programming. Eclipse was fine with these, but now you need the new Ganymede release to ride with ZF and Magento.

So in a way this unexpected behavior now between Magento and XAMPP is self-serving because, if you research the problem, the solution recommended just about everywhere is to download Zend Core as an alternative to XAMPP.

Well XAMPP, my friend, it was fun while it lasted, but the cards are stacked against you now. It has been days since I made the switch and Magento hasn’t crashed at all. Not even once! So, if you’re having the same problem as I was, just save yourself some time and try Zend Core. You’ll thank yourself later.