I downloaded the most recent version of XAMPP (v.1.7.7) and decided start a database. When I opened phpMyAdmin, it alerts me there is a new version of phpMyAdmin available.
You'll need to change your configuration file. Open up your XAMPP installation directory, browse to the folder phpmyadmin, and look for a file called config.inc.php. If there isn't one already, you'll first need to copy config.sample.inc.php to config.inc.php. Then, just open config.inc.php and find this line:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = false;
Change it to:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = true;
Open a command prompt and type this, followed by Enter:
mysqladmin -u root -p pass
When it asks you for the current password, just press Enter again. Then set the new password, and log in to phpMyAdmin using that.