Lost with local server install

I have carried this thread over from
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96735
Iam realy lost as to what to do. I have followed the zencart books instructions and had been building a site, happy with my progress, until I found that XAMPP win32-1.4.16-installer-exe has a trojan horse, xampp/php/php4/phpcli is corupt, trojan horse psw.Legendmir in its file's.
I have searched the forums and found some comments but no real answers.I have completly wipped my system of Xampp and deleted my zencart site(anouther issue, my fault).
I want to start over but every time I download Xampp my security tells me it is corupt.
My Question is, What can I use to create my local server instead of Xampp win32-1.4.16-installer-exe?
And how do I go about it?
I am not a programer by any means, but am prepared to have a go at any ideas.
Your support would be greatly apreciated.
Regards
Eddie

http://www.wampserver.com/en/
Try Wamp from url above...similar to Xampp

EasyPHP is pretty nifty. Search SourceForge for it. I've used 1.8 on Win98, XP,
and Vista.

Thank you for your responces Misty/Tshooter, have chosen to try php as i think it a smart move to start with zen 1.3.8 to save having to do an update after creating this site.
I have installed it on my system and just completed a full system scan so far so good, I am guessing if I follow the book it will be very simular to set up as xampp??? fingers crossed.
Thanks again for your assistance. Will keep you posted.
regards
Eddie

Don't mean to hijack your thread, but can anyone tell me why, with remote hosting available for a few bucks a month, anyone would go to the trouble of a local Zencart installation? Never quite understood the motive.

stevesh:

Don't mean to hijack your thread, but can anyone tell me why, with remote hosting available for a few bucks a month, anyone would go to the trouble of a local Zencart installation? Never quite understood the motive.
much quicker, when designing templates, testing mods, to use localhost install of zencart, rather than spend time ftp uploading, then altering etc. :smile: