Hello, I recently installed Apache 2 + PHP 5.3.1 + MySQL 5.1.44 on my Windows 7 64bit machine following this guide: http://sleeplessgeek.blogspot.com/2010/01/setting-up-apache-php-mysql-phpmyadmin.html It all went fine, php is working great (even with XDebug) but I cannot connect to mysql server. A simple script I wrote to test connection (yes, root has no pass): $username = "root"; $password = ""; $database = "test"; $hostname = "localhost"; $conn = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password) or die("Unable to connect to MySQL Database!!"); It prints this error after 60sec of timeout: Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond. I can connect to mysql using cmdmysql -h localhost -u root Services are working properly. There also seems to be a problem with PhpMyAdmin (using 3.2.5). As soon as I type user and pass the page loads and turns blank (content-lenght in headers is 0 but status code is 302 Found). Looks like something wrong with cookies (my auth method). I hope someone has a clue, it has to be something dumb simple I missed. Thanks in advance.