I had the same problem as another topic down a few lines: I was trying to get MySQL to run, and kept getting the "connection failed" error. Sequence of events:
1) installed XAMPP
2) installed MySQL with a user account and the root account. User account had a password, root account didn't.
3) added a root password through PHPMyAdmin. Connection failure began happening after I did this.
4) tried different possible fixes, including the "change password" advice in the FAQ.
5) tried to remove and reinstall XAMPP. Since I didn't like the folder it originally installed to, I took this opportunity to try to change that, and installed to a different folder.
Now nothing will work. The Windows list of services keeps looking for Apache in the old location, which of course is no longer valid. Thus, Apache won't start automatically. When I start it manually with xampp_start, it starts and runs, but I still have the MySQL connection error.
I want to COMPLETELY REMOVE all traces of the XAMPP install, so that I can reinstall it from scratch. How do I do this?
-- Jon W