I tried to install Neard then install Composr. I have to say, I hate Neard (this is my first time trying it).

Launching the neard.exe file for the first time on my VM is taking like 30 minutes to finish, because it is "Removing deprecated features" on an entirely fresh install. Then it tells me to restart it to apply a new configuration without me actually doing anything to it. And when I'm starting it again, it starts to launch in the background with high CPU, but takes a while to pop up anything to tell me it is launching. During testing this made me try and load it again, which game me some errors and used even more CPU.

MySQL (well, MariaDB) was not working with its stated default blank password. Neard gives me error messages out of the box. This was all using the full version of Neard. The full version is incredibly bloated, containing multiple competing database engines - maybe okay if you have a very over-powered development machine, but not for most people and very unnecessary. I am strongly suspecting this is installing way too many services, and doing too much in the background, hence it was bogging down the Composr installer for you.

So, I went back to the start to try the Basic version. Neard says it is "portable", but then it install services that auto-start without an installer. So I just deleted the folder and made a new folder. Maybe portable, but that's not what users of portable software want, they want no footprint.

So on the basic version, it also takes ages to get going, and also gives me an error message during this about MySQL not working. But this time it does actually work despite that error message. Neard sits in the corner of my desktop continuously scrolling through a "loading bar", which I am now ignoring. Regardless, I was able to get through the installer.

If you've been struggling with WAMP systems I imagine it is because it's not what most developers are using, so things tend to break, either by compatibility slipping between the integrated components in some way, or by things falling through the cracks of how it tries to integrate stuff. Not enough programmer eyes and resources going into WAMP.

Thnaks for taking a look, wasn't expecting you to actually try Neard out, was just checking there was no valid reason for the installer to give up and white screen. I didn't have the same issues as you (no issue with loading bars, no errors) but I agree it's a bit weird for a portable wamp. Seems to have no issues other than with installing but I will go for the latest Bitnami and see if I can get my older localhost sites working with MariaDB.