Splunkweb starts and crashes after a few seconds - error in start listener

[Richter12x2]

I installed Splunk yesterday on my local machine, and it worked for most of the day, until I restarted the services. Now the splunkweb service won't stay running. I've searched, and tried everything I found in the answers, except for the thread that looked perfect, said "That solved it, thanks!" only it did not appear to contain the actual instructions that fixed the problem.

Information:

While service is running, I can hit the page and login successfully, if I restart it fast enough, I can perform another action or two, but can't make involved changes because it errors out too fast. The fact I can connect shows it's not a firewall issue.

netstat shows that port is not in use

restarting computer did not free the port

uninstalled/reinstalled Splunk, did not solve issue

uninstalled/removed all Splunk and Python references from regedit/reinstalled Splunk, did not solve issue.

The only connections are from my localmachine to my localmachine

Error message from web_service.log:

2014-01-31 07:55:36,532 INFO    [52ebb964361f5b470] root:138 - ENGINE: Started monitor thread '_TimeoutMonitor'.

2014-01-31 07:56:33,035 ERROR [52ebb964361f5b470] root:138 - ENGINE: Error in 'start' listener >
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\wspbus.py", line 147, in publish
output.append(listener(*args, **kwargs))
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy_cpserver.py", line 95, in start
ServerAdapter.start(self)
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\servers.py", line 60, in start
self.wait()
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\servers.py", line 101, in wait
wait_for_occupied_port(host, port)
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\servers.py", line 266, in wait_for_occupied_port
raise IOError("Port %r not bound on %r" % (port, host))
IOError: Port 8000 not bound on '0.0.0.0'

2014-01-31 07:56:33,035 ERROR [52ebb964361f5b470] root:138 - ENGINE: Shutting down due to error in start listener:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\wspbus.py", line 184, in start
self.publish('start')
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\wspbus.py", line 147, in publish
output.append(listener(*args, **kwargs))
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy_cpserver.py", line 95, in start
ServerAdapter.start(self)
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\servers.py", line 60, in start
self.wait()
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\servers.py", line 101, in wait
wait_for_occupied_port(host, port)
File "C:\Program Files\Splunk\Python-2.7\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\process\servers.py", line 266, in wait_for_occupied_port
raise IOError("Port %r not bound on %r" % (port, host))
IOError: Port 8000 not bound on '0.0.0.0'

2014-01-31 07:56:33,035 INFO [52ebb964361f5b470] root:138 - ENGINE: Bus STOPPING

[Richter12x2 · Accepted solution]

So by default, splunkweb attempts to attach to port 8000 of all open interfaces, but on my laptop, I have a few special interfaces (like a VPN adapter). By editing the web.conf (copying over from the defaults to the local directory, and editing there) I set the bind ip address to my actual IP address, and it's started fine.