home pc acting as a real server ? sounds strange - if your ip is not known to the rest of the internet world via name servers. just get a normal real server and these 'problems' will be non-existent.

Matt i tried setting the url to mydomain.com instead of http://ip-address/elgg/, and that did not work. 

I just re-read your original question - are you trying to host a live site using xampp?  If so, don't.  It's not secure, like, really really not secure.  It's great for local development, but you shouldn't have xampp be publicly accessible.

Keep it internal and use the ip address, or use http://localhost/elgg

anybody have any idea on how to do this???

Use this code it will display all latest blogs:-

if (elgg_is_active_plugin('blog')) {
elgg_push_context('widgets');
$options = array(
    'type' => 'object',
    'subtype' => 'blog',
    'limit' => 5,//$num,
    'full_view' => FALSE,'list_type' => 'list',
    'pagination' => FALSE,
    );
$content = elgg_list_entities($options);
echo elgg_view_module('featured',  elgg_echo("Recent Blogs"), $content);
elgg_pop_context();
}

thanks a lot! i really appreciate your help!

Click the X in the upper right hand corner.

the messages are not closing when you click the x.