Diagnosing "The connection to localhost was interrupted" - php

Question

I've been developing a Laravel 4 site on my work machine for over a year. Today I began receiving a The connection to localhost was interrupted error whenever I attempt to access the site. At the moment I'm just trying to find applicable log files that might tell me what's failing, and would appreciate suggestions from those more versed in tracking down this kind of failure. You'll see one possible cause below, but I still need to find some error logs to have any idea how to fix it. Here are some pertinent details:
I'm running Windows 7, IIS 7.5, PHP 5.5.1, and Laravel 4.1.23.
The application is accessed via https://localhost/ephy, and IIS is configured to deliver the ephy directory over SSL.
http://localhost/ephy correctly returns a 403 error indicating that the page must be accessed over SSL.
When copies of phpinfo.php (containing just a call to phpinfo() ) are placed in both the root directory and the ephy subdirectory, http://localhost/phpinfo.php executes, while https://localhost/ephy/phpinfo.php returns the connection reset error.
The application itself is executing successfully on the production server, so the PHP code is valid.
Yesterday I installed Office 2013, uninstalled Office 2010, uninstalled Office 2013, and then reinstalled Office 2013 (in that order). I also installed 2 GB of memory, because Outlook 2013 kept hanging.
The site was accessible as of 4pm yesterday, after all of that installation activity was already over.
I've made no changes to the application or the computer configuration since 4pm.
I've restarted the computer several times.
I've checked the files in C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles , but they don't show any error messages.
So, I know PHP is running successfully and that the issue is specific to serving the application directory itself, but that's as far as I've been able to get. Recommendations on where to find (or how to generate) logs which would indicate what's happening, or any insights into the failure itself, would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Ok, after finally finding the magic combination of search terms on Google (ERR_CONNECTION_RESET localhost iis 7, for those who are curious, the first term being the error message from Chrome specifically), I was able to determine that this behavior can be caused by not having the self-signed security certificate correctly bound to the site in IIS. As I said, the site had been working successfully, but with the software updates I'd done something probably got borked (maybe adding the memory changed the computer's identity such that the certificate was no longer valid? I don't know).
So, I followed the instructions at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/tip-trick-enabling-ssl-on-iis7-using-self-signed-certificates (with a bit of adjustment because apparently the binding has to be done at the default site level in IIS 7.5, rather than at the individual site level), whacking and replacing the existing certificate and SSL binding in the process. The site is now working again on my box.
So, in a nutshell: if you're running SSL on localhost under IIS and you get "connection to localhost was interrupted" messages, try redoing the certificate and binding.
Man, glad that's over...