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Hi All,

I've been running WinXP-Pro/SP2 with MySQL 5.0.15-nt for at least six
months. I've had K:\_Utilities\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\My.cnf set up
for all that time as:

[client]

host=localhost
port=3306
user=root
password=[snip]

Today, I was setting up Ruby-on-Rails stuff so I could change, in just
one line, the base-name for a suite of development/test/production
databases an then:
- generate a proper .yml file to tell a Rails app the database
names/attributes
- generate a set of drop/create/grant SQL statements for those
databases
- use one line to direct MySQL to create the suite of databases.

It all worked great except MySQL now refuses to grant access to root
with my password.
I didn't change nor forget my password ... its my same developer
password I've used for decades.
Rebooting Windows didn't improve the situation.

Control Panel Services says MySQL is started.
Task Manager Applications says MySQL Server 5.0 is running
The vanilla command "mysql" reports:
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'
(using password: YES)
Ditto for the command "mysql -uroot -p" with my subsequently password
entered

The only thing unusual this time is that I fired up MySQL Front and
fumbled around with it (because I hardly ever use it). It didn't seem
to do anything flaky and hasn't ever caused any problem heretofore.

Is un/re-install of MySQL likely to get it working again. Is safe to
copy into a new installation some saved database directories from my
current configuration.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
Vanilla "mysql" used to start