A great way to trouble shoot a MySQL installation is to run it from the command line. This lets you do a "direct" connection without getting tripped up by other layers of software that might not be working such as PHPMyAdmin.This video shows how to locate and run mySQL from the command line with an EasPHP installation on your local computer. NOTE: You may have to go all the way into the /bin folder to make this work. Use Windows Explorer to find mySQL.exe. That's the folder you have to be in to run the program from the command line. Or.... set up your classpath to point to this folder. Here is a link showing how to set up the CLASSPATH Less