Yes, I restarted MySQL.
The error message in phpMyAdmin is "Error: Cannot log in to the MySQL server".
There is no clue in (PCusername).err, it just says when I started and stopped the server.
As for having another instance of MySQL, I'm not certain but I think I did.
Do you have my.ini in your Windows directory that contains the user root with a password?
No, all it had in it was "[WinMySQLAdmin]
Server=C:/Program Files/XAMPP/xampp/mysql/bin/mysqld-nt.exe".
Do you have a my (drag this link file into your text editor to view or edit it's content) or my.cfg in your xampp\mysql\bin directory that contains a root user with a password?
No, I have no such files in that directory.
Did you read the xampp\readme_en.txt file * MYSQL NOTES:?
Yes, but I don't know how to use the thing that might fix my problem:
"MySQL starts with standard values for the user id and the password. The preset
user id is "root", the password is "" (= no password). To access MySQL via PHP
with the preset values, you'll have to use the following syntax:
mysql_connect("localhost","root","");
If you want to set a password for MySQL access, please use of mysqladmin.
To set the passwort "secret" for the user "root", type the following:
C:\xampp\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root password secret"
Where do I type that? I tried it in my Windows cmd.exe, but all I got was:
'C:\Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
This is what I entered:
C:\Program Files\XAMPP\xampp\MySQL\bin\mysqladmin -u root password secret