Re: phpMyAdmin - #1045 - Access denied for user 'pmausr'@'localhost' (using password: YES).

[sim diggles]

I had problems installing phpMyAdmin for days and read two dozen forum solutions in attempt to repair the issue, to no avail. Until I ran into an explanation on a Wordpress forum which explains how to make a blog’s “category” and “archive” features work (using permalinks). Why is this guy talking about Wordpress? Well, fixing this issue also fixed my phpMyAdmin error #1045 (access denied) issue. Basically, it’s a problem stemming from Apache’s permissions for php to access and manipulate directories.
If you’ve tried everything to fix this issue and nothing has worked, than try modifying Apache’s .conf file by adding the following lines of code…

<Directory "c:/www/phpMyAdmin">
Options None
AllowOverride None
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>

The location of the Directory in the first line should be modified to correspond to the location of your phpMyAdmin directory on your local machine.

Finally, it is beneficial to add a virtual host entry into your Apache httpd-vhosts.conf file for purposes of accessing phpMyAdmin easily from your browser. Add the entry:

# ----------------------------------------------------------
# -------------- Localhost ---------------------
# ----------------------------------------------------------

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "c:/www"
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

Again, change the directory to correspond to your webserver root (as above), or specifically to your phpMyAdmin directory ("c:/www/phpmyadmin").

You may need to modify your Windows hosts (c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts) file to accommodate.

More info here… http://codex.wordpress.org/Permalinks#Fixing_Other_Issues