Complete Newbie

Hi, I have not done anything with PHP before and have downloaded and isntalled the source code without any errors, however after following the install instructions on php.net I now cannot start my web server, in the error logs I get unable to get local address but the server was working fine before i reinstalled to get support for PHP. Is this something really obvious that I am doing wrong here ?? I have hada quick look through the FAQ and I am waiting for the FAQ to come through via this list so I apologise if this is already covered. I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction of how to solve this problem. Thank you very much Regards biscut