accidently deleted my root privileges MySQL 5.7 on Linux Mint 18

[Dave Henzler]

Been working just fine. I was adding a new account and noticed root access to it which for some reason I decided was not what I wanted. Erased it, and I now have no privileges.

Accomplished this using phpMyAdmin. works fast! even making big mistakes.

HELP ! I've tried everything to restart mysqld --skip-grant-tables &

and can't get it to work... says socket isn't there.. of course not mysqld isn't running.

The only way I can stop and start mysqld seems to be with:

#service mysql stop

#service mysql start

I've got some Word Press sites that I'll be needing to update. This is killing that.

Dave