Genious: The DNS flush from RiggsFolly's link [forum.wampserver.com] is exactly what I needed. I had already checked the hosts (removing ::1 127.0.0.1) file and port 80 via netstat -aon, (removing anything in port 80 via task manager after sorting by PID).
I was seeing the menu from phpmyadmin but localhost would time out. Viewing source showed in the body that "phpmyadmin works best with frames-capable browsers." which I had tried ie8 and chrome, both are frames-capable.
The DNS flush however. This was a new install of windows 8 so I'm not sure why I had issues, but this article covered nearly all of the things that are suggested to try. Two thumbs up.