The issue was that I didn't have the Visual C++ Redistributable package. I realized this after rebooting the computer and getting a MSVCP110.dll missing
error in a system dialog box rather than a dialog box from XAMPP.
If anyone else is having this very same issue, download Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 here, in the Microsoft website. Although the computer works with a x64 architecture, I downloaded the x86 version and it worked. Make your choice but I'd recommend doing the same, because PHP is x86 only (x64 is merely experimental and the drivers are x86 aswell).