'root' is denied access to all databases/connections

[Phillip Powell]

I successfully reinstalled MySQL 8.0 onto my personal laptop after having my laptop serviced and reimaged due to serious hardware issues. I was finally able to solve the initial problem with the loss of access by 'root' back in February when all of this took place, however, it's now April, and the database is once again inaccessible due to no known reason:

Access denied for 'root'@'localhost'.

I followed every known step to restore access to 'root', including creating a .txt file and running it via mysqld --init-file="path/to/file.txt" --console with the line

ALTER USER ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '[my password]'

However, upon restarting MySQL 8.0 and trying to access via Command Line Client and via Workbench, access by 'root' was still denied.

I don't know what to do, nor do I know why this happened, but this is a total showstopper for any further development work on my end.

Please help if you can.

Thanks