Thanks @Ahmed Agha. For a good while I could not successfully utilise phpMyAdmin as it frequently gave me the error message "mysqli::real_connect(): (HY000/2002): No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it". I checked the Configure Server Management link when setting up a new instance and observed error in testing access to mySqld on my.ini file, however still had no clue what the cause was. I was reluctant to do a reinstall at this stage. Above solution re deleting comments above 'server-id' in my.ini file solved the issue with the Configuration server management. But I am still trying to sort out the phpMyAdmin issue.