It’s taken me ages today to fix a move of WordPress from my live site to my local host development site. Xampp installed beautifully; WordPress loaded like a charm; my database imported fine. Everything seemed to be working. Until I clicked a link. Then it redirected back to the live site.
So, lots of research and help along the way:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress#Moving_WordPress_to_a_New_Server
http://www.billerickson.net/migrating-wordpress-websites/
It was that last site that tipped me on to searchandreplace.php. What a god-send! In just over 5 seconds, my database was cleaned of all references to the live site and now works perfectly as a local development site.
When i need to move the site back to a live production server, it will be much quicker!
Thanks, guys. I lurve the internet community!!