okey, I tried some different stuff, including "admin" and "root" as passwords. none of them worked. I also tried to reconfigure mysql, including changing the password to "ascent". what happens is, every step work until "Apply security settings", when the program goes processing for a while until an error message occurs. this error message is the same as in navicat, it says: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES) the port is open, i'm admin etc. so nothing wrong there afaik. any suggestions?