I have made some progress. I installed xampp and DW on a different machine and now xampp appears to be working OK.
If I select Status from the xampp menu all appears activated except IPv6.
However if I try to run a page from F12 in DW I get the following error.
The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.
Can anyone please see where I am wrong?
I attach an image which I hope illustrates the situation.
Thanks
John