Joy,
I haven't got this documented on the LAMS wiki as I haven't encountered the problem before. I don't follow the Moodle forums closely so I hadn't picked up the problem being reported there.
I'm not quite sure what's happened here. Did you install another copy of MySQL when you installed LAMS? The LAMS installer doesn't actually install MySQL, it uses whatever version of MySQL you point it to.
When you installed LAMS it should have asked you for the root password for MySQL and a LAMS password. It then uses the root password that you supply to create a new user in MYSQL for LAMS and gives it the LAMS password and creates a new database for LAMS. So it shouldn't change any of your existing passwords or disrupted your Moodle database.
One catch with the installer is that the installer can't automatically find the MySQL directory in the XAMP installation. It relies on the MySQL setting in the registry to tell it where MySQL is. MySQL as installed by the MySQL installer sets the registry setting, but XAMP doesn't (or at least hasn't in the past). So you have to select the MySQL directory manually.
I have run the installer on a PC running an older version of Moodle and one of the XAMP flavours many times without this problem so I'm trying to work out what you and I have done differently!
Can I also check which pages on our wiki that you found. Did you find the Moodle page (http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Moodle) and the Windows Installer page (http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/Windows+Installer+Help). Its not a criticism if you didn't - I just want to know so that if didn't find both, then I need to put in some extra links so that people can find both.
Fiona
Posted by Fiona Malikoff