I also get this error. I found a way to get rid of it from a comment in this forum:
http://us2.php.net/mcrypt . I don't know if it is the best way to fix the problem however. I would appreciate feedback on this issue.
The only thing that I changed after the xampp install (this is for version 1.6.1) was that I went to the security page and created a login for phpMyAdmin using "cookie" based authentification. Before creating that password, I didn't get the mcrypt error in phpMyAdmin, but it did complain about me not having a password. After creating the password, when I go to phpMyAdmin, I get the error.
This is the only version of Apache installed on my system.
The comment from the above website which fixed my problem was this:
To enable mcrypt extension under Windows you need to:
1) uncomment line "extension=php_mcrypt.dll" in php.ini
2) download libmcrypt.dll from
http://files.edin.dk/php/win32/mcrypt/ and put it to System32 directory (for example C:\Windows\System32).
Tested on Windows XP+Apache 1.3.37+PHP 4.4.6 (as SAPI module!!!)
P.S.
I wrote this because I got "Cannot load mcrypt extension. Please check your PHP configuration." from phpMyAdmin when I simply uncommented "extension=php_mcrypt.dll" line.
Rob
http://robsnotebook.com