Izzy,
Thank you for your offer to help.
I deleted the post to which you referred.
Here is a detailed account of how I installed XAMPP and WordPress on my machine:
1. I downloaded XAMPPLite for Windows, choosing the exe version, and installed it in d:/xampplite.
2. I browsed to d:\xampplite and doubleclicked "setup_xampp.bat". A DOS window opened and I typed <Space> to close it.
3. Then I doubleclicked xampp-control.exe and started the Apache and Mysql services.
4. Next, I browsed to
http://localhost/. I chose English from the menu in the left column.
5. I then clicked on phpMyAdmin in the left column.
6.I entered "wordpress" (without the quotes) in the "Create New Database" Field, and after verifying that "utf8_unicode_ci" in the drop down box in the next field was selected, I clicked Create.
7. Then I downloaded Wordpress (2.2.2 because that is what my online blog is using) and unzipped it to c:\xampplite\htdocs. The folder structure is \htdocs\wordpress\<all the files andfolders>.
8. I opened the wp-config-sample.php and saved it as "wp-config.php" after changing DB_NAME, DB_USER, and DB_HOST to 'wordpress', 'root', and 'localhost'. I left DB_PASSWORD blank.
9. I browsed to
http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php and was presented with the WP "Welcome to WordPress installation... First Step>" screen.
10. I clicked "First Step" and followed the instructions to a successful installation.
I assume the database was installed correctly because I used Xampp's phpmyadmin to peek inside the wordpress database tables and verified that the WP post "Hello World" was present.
11. Then I remembered no seeing the WP control panel for this installation, so I browsed to
http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php and was presented with a WP login screen.
That's where the process went awry. I used the username 'admin' and the password '0fb42a' that WordPress assigned me and warned me to remember. This resulted in an incorrect password error.
12. So I peeked in the wordpress database, wp_users table and saw a single username of 'admin' and a hashed password field. I copied the hashed password to Notebook, then from Notebook to the clipboard.
13. I went back to the login screen, logging in as 'admin' and pasting the hashed PW into the PW field. That also failed with an "Incorrect Password" error.
14. I then used phpmyadmin from the Apache cpanel, opened MySQL and looked at the 'user' table. It contains 2 users - one named 'root' and the other named 'pma' whatever that means. Both password fields are empty.
So do you think a step is missing? Something is, because the WP cpanel appears to be missing.
I hope this information can help you help me...