Reinstalled XAMPP and now I cannot create database

[WhiskeyJack]

I had successfully installed the latest XAMPP (1.7.2) and everything was fine. But, because Joomla does not run on PHP 5.3, I had to uninstall XAMPP 1.7.2 and then did a fresh install of XAMPP 1.7.1 (which includes PHP 5.2.9)

When I installed XAMPP, I did not select the option for them to run as Windows services. I prefer to start (and stop) Apache and MySQL via the control panel.

Now, when I try to create a new database in phpMyAdmin, I get the following error:

db_create.php: Missing parameter: new_db

Can someone tell me how to fix this?