I'm kind of stuck on what to do with this. There were several options I found between this site and the mysql site on how to resolve a forgotten root password, but I think I've now broken it.
I was unable to use the line command with the created reset text file that mysql.com recommended here
So I uninstalled WAMP which is what I had used to install it to begin with. That also failed because after reinstall I had a new version and I couldnt log into either of them. Apparently both versions were still there as uninstalling WAMP didnt uninstall MySQL.
So I tried the make-sure-everything-is-deleted steps here and rebooted and reinstalled WAMP. No go, won't take default password.
Tried to run the command line command using the newest version and got this error.
Now I can't do anything I need to get done and all other posts I find on this seem to be variants of these things I've already tried.
This time around, the newer version of mysql let me log in with no password. I was able to get it fixed from the command line and get it reset to what I wanted. Tried that multiple times before, so I cannot say I understand what changed now, but it did.