I installed EasyPHP 5.3.6, opened PhpMyAdmin, created a new databased and set password for root user. "Naturally" following that I was unable to login into PhpMyAdmin anymore, getting the infamous 1045 Access Denied error.
I tried everything I could find - setting password (in two places) in config.inc.php doesn't seem to work. I also tried changing AllowNoPassword to true (or false, whichever one it was not originally), that didn't do anything. I tried going through phpmyadmin/scripts/signon.php and enter the password there (it's the correct password, I saved it in my password manager) and couldn't login either. I also tried following instructions for resetting MySQL password I found but they used a mysqld-nt.exe which I didn't find in my installation. I also tried uninstalling EasyPHP and reinstalling it (and before doing that I used ccleaner to remove any registry issues it found, though admittedly there was nothing there about mysql) and it of course retained the "incorrect password" and wouldn't let me login.
Short of reformatting my harddrive I'm not sure what else I can do. (How does it keep the broken settings after uninstall??)
Any help would be appreciated.
I also would like to understand why doing something supposedly good to protect your database turns out to be such a painful procedure that it is actually recommended to leave the root user without a password? sigh
Clearing cache allowed me to get to phpmyadmin after re-installing easyphp. Thanks to Danae above.