I have a windows and I installed XAMPP for it, for a web app I am building as part of my class project. I installed it using recommended settings and didn't change anything, but when I try to access localhost/phpmyadmin, and even 127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin, I get the error:
Connection for controluser as defined in your configuration failed.
I looked at the other questions posted here on Stackoverflow about the same issue and tried some of the answers posted, but nothing seems to work. I am thoroughly confused and lost. Should I just find another service to use?
The mentioned error caused due to mis-configuration of your PHPMyadmin's configuration settings.
Check the user credentials mentioned in your PHPMyadmin's config.inc.php file. As you said you are using xampp on windows the path will be similar like below:
C:\xampp\phpMyAdmin\config.inc.php
In the above file check the below 2 lines (at around line #30):
/* User for advanced features */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = 'pma';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = '';