I ended up helping one of the members set up Joomla on his local machine (Win XP) yesterday. Install Wamp; unzip joomla into your wamp's www folder.
If you want to install WAMP 2.5. WAMP includes Apache 2.4 that is no longer compatible with Windows XP and Win. You will need at least. Download WampServer for free. Wampserver is not compatible with Windows XP, SP3, or Windows Server 2003. Manage your Apache and MySQL services.
From WampServer is a utility designed to allows you to create Web applications and manage your server and databases. WampServer is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache2, PHP and a MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin and SQLiteManager to easily manage your databases.
WampServer installs automatically (installer), and its usage is very intuitive. You will be able to tune your server without even touching the setting files.
Install Wamp On Surface 3
Install Wamp On Windows Server 2012
WampServer is the only packaged solution that will allow you to reproduce your production server. Once WampServer is installed, you have the possibility to add as many Apache, MySQL, and PHP releases as you want. WampServer also has a tray icon to manage your server and its settings.