Решение с запуском нашел на каком-то буржуйском сайте:
You are trying to run some program on Windows (such as apache.exe or htpasswd.exe) and you are getting "The system cannot execute the specified program" error. This usually means that the program you are trying to run was compiled against DLLs that are not on your system. You should useDependency Walkerto see which DLLs are missing, and then install them.
The Apache 2.x binary windows distribution, specifically, was compiled against theVisual Studio 2005 re-distributable package, which you can download from microsoft.

одним словом нужно було что-то скачать новой версии и установить:
The official download for the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)orThe official download for the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x64)

Но теперь другая ошибка про установке апача как сервиса:
no such host is known could not resolve host name megaplan -- ignoring...