After reading this entire post and about 3 others that google returned, I finally fixed the problem. It was all about the browser cache. If you follow the instructions about altering this:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = ''; // MySQL password (only needed // with 'config' auth_type "
file. You will probably still continue to get the error until you clear the cache.
Hope it works for you... I can finally breathe again.