phpMyAdmin Access Denied - help?

[trippingpara]

Sorry, newbie here and very confused. I just loaded XAMPP 1.8.1 on my Windows 7 pc (32 bit). Everything loaded fine but when I tried to open phpMyAdmin (via the XAMPP Control Panel), I get the following error:

MySQL said: Documentation
#2002 - No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

The server is not responding (or the local server's socket is not correctly configured).
Connection for controluser as defined in your configuration failed.

Um...help! I'm lost and don't know what to do here. Can someone please assist me? Thank you.