ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for 'root' With All Privileges

If you get an error 1044 (42000) when you try to run SQL commands in MySQL (which installed along XAMPP server) cmd prompt, then here's the solution:

1. Close your MySQL command prompt.

2. Open your cmd prompt (from Start menu -> run -> cmd) which will show: C:\Users\User>_

3. Go to MySQL.exe by Typing the following commands:

C:\Users\User>cd\ C:\>cd xampp C:\xampp>cd mysql C:\xxampp\mysql>cd bin C:\xampp\mysql\bin>mysql -u root

1. Now try creating a new database by typing:

   mysql> create database employee;
   

   if it shows:

   Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
   mysql>
   

   Then congrats ! You are good to go...

First, Identify the user you are logged in as:

 select user();
 select current_user();

The result for the first command is what you attempted to login as, the second is what you actually connected as. Confirm that you are logged in as root@localhost in mysql.

Grant_priv to root@localhost. Here is how you can check.

mysql> SELECT host,user,password,Grant_priv,Super_priv FROM mysql.user;
+-----------+------------------+-------------------------------------------+------------+------------+
| host      | user             | password                                  | Grant_priv | Super_priv |
+-----------+------------------+-------------------------------------------+------------+------------+
| localhost | root             | ***************************************** | N          | Y          |
| localhost | debian-sys-maint | ***************************************** | Y          | Y          |
| localhost | staging          | ***************************************** | N          | N          |
+-----------+------------------+-------------------------------------------+------------+------------+

You can see that the Grant_priv is set to N for root@localhost. This needs to be Y. Below is how to fixed this:

UPDATE mysql.user SET Grant_priv='Y', Super_priv='Y' WHERE User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost';

I logged back in, it was fine.

The reason i could not delete some of the users via 'drop' statement was that there is a bug in Mysql http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=62255 with hostname containing upper case letters. The solution was running following query:

DELETE FROM mysql.user where host='Some_Host_With_UpperCase_Letters';

I am still trying to figure the other issue where the root user with all permissions are unable to grant privileges to new user for particular database