WordPress MU

I followed all of the instructions here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WPMU
but am getting the following

"Error establishing a database connection"

These are the steps i did:
1) created database
2) created db user with permissions
3) uploaded to webserver (mydomain.com/wpmu/
4) filled in all the values on the page accordingly

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated

My only theory is that it isn't clear in the direction is what to fill in for "Database Host".
I am using "localhost"
Shouldn't that be right?

Did you give the db user ALL permissions?

Also, if you are on shared hosting, the Database Host won't necessarily be "localhost". Check with your host and see what the domain name is for your database server.

yes, i did give all permissions.
somehow the install was throwing odd stuff to the config.php (like an addition prefix to the name of the database (database_database_wpmu instead of the correct database_wpmu)

interestingly, i could not get it to work on mydomain.com/wpmu, but i was able to get it to install on the subdomain: wpmu.mydomain.com (which i would prefer not to use).

does this provide any hints on the error?

Uh, that is weird...

what kind of server setup ya got?

pretty normal shared hosting on site5.com

how did you set up the WPMU install there? When I tested them, they didn't want to modify httpd.conf, rather wanted stuff added to .htaccess and use parked/add-on domains for the ServerAlias *.

Just curious…

Because their server alreayd has the wildcard done in the httpd.conf for the main domain of the web account. So it's not needed in that case because it's already there.

But really it's more a question for their support team because it depends on how else the server is set up, if the domain is the main one blah blah blah... You will need to add the *.yourdomain.com to the DNS records there too.

though i was able to get it to install on the subdomain: wpmu.mydomain.com it didn't work out - it kept pointing to pages that didn't exist.

after a couple of tries i gave up and installed it on the root of a domain that i had but wasn't using.

it works like a charm.

the odd thing is that it is in the same hosting account.....go figure.

On some servers, it just won't work right. No idea why.

I also have troubles with installing wordpress.
I use xampp with following:

* Apache/2.2.11 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8i PHP/5.2.9
* MySQL client version: 5.0.51a
* PHP extension: mysql

Any ideas?

What sort of errors? Your post really doesn't give us any idea of what your problem is so how can we help you.

No ideas without seeing the kind of errors you have or the trouble you're experiencing.