With phpMyAdmin, there are different means of authenticating ("auth_types"). These are generally set in the configuration file, config.inc.php
, using a line like $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';
.
Using cookie
or http
prompt the user for username and password when connecting; config
means it's hardcoded in to the configuration file and you're automatically connected. The default in the official phpMyAdmin distribution is cookie
, however it sounds like XAMPP makes it config
. You should be able to change that simply by editing the config.inc.php
file and changing (or adding) the line mentioned above..