Windows

If for some reason the default exercise file username (admin) and password (booth) don't work, you can change them in the database itself using phpMyAdmin. (This technique is demonstrated in a video from Chapter 8, "Recovering from disasters".)

1. Open your Drupal database with phpMyAdmin.
2. Go to the "users" table. Click the Browse icon.
3. For the row where uid = 1, click the Edit icon. (Note the value under the "Name" column: That's the administrator's username.)
4. In the "pass" row, select "MD5" under the "Function" column
5. In the same row, enter your new password under the "Value" column.
6. At the bottom of the screen, click the "Go" button.

You should now be able to log in with that username and new password.

Skip Taylor reported on drupal.org:

I wanted to see the video quality so I tried one of the free demo tutorials. There's audio and a green background. I have the latest QuickTime installed and using Firefox 3 with the QuickTime plug-in. Should there be more to this than a green background?

Indeed there should. :) Lynda.com gave him the following steps, which solved the problem:

I had to change a setting in Quicktime 7.5:

1. Open the QuickTime Application
2. Go to: Edit > Preferences > QuickTime Preferences
3. Click on the Advanced tab
4. In the Video section (midway down in the window), select the option for Safemode (GDI only) instead of DirectX
5. Restart the browser.

Please comment here if that doesn't work for you.

The username and password to log in as the administrator for the Drupal Essential Training example site are:

USERNAME = admin
PASSWORD = booth

We mention it at one point in the course, but should have given it more frequently. Sorry for the omission.

L.H. writes: "In Windows Vista, the WAMP icon disappears from the system tray after x time (not sure about the duration protocols). To make the WAMP icon re-appear (so that you can access localhost, phpmyadmin, php.ini, etc.), you have to activate the "start WAMP server" icon (from start menu, desktop or wherever); then the system tray icon reappears. Pain in the chicken, but that's Vista."

This problem often occurs because one of the default settings of WAMP is too low. You'll see the issue if you go to the MySQL-controlling phpMyAdmin screen (probably at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin) and click "Import": The maximum file size allowed is 2,048K. That's only 2MB, and the databases for most Drupal sites are much larger than that. (The example site for Drupal Essential Training gets as big as 5MB.)

To change this limit:

1. Click the WAMP icon in your system tray.
2. Select "PHP". In the side menu, select "php.ini" to open a file containing PHP's configuration options.
3. Search for the line, "upload_max_filesize = 2M".
4. Change it to "upload_max_filesize = 32M" (or whatever you like).
5. Save the file and restart WAMP. (Better yet, restart your computer entirely to be sure. I'm frankly not sure whether it makes a difference.)
6. Now go back to that "Import" screen in phpMyAdmin: You should notice that the limit has changed.

Thanks to L.H. for pointing this out!