dbarefoot,
I feel your pain. I just grappled with the same issue. I finally got it figured out, and here’s what I did – as usual, operator error.
While getting my blog set up, I had to tweak my wp-config.php file a few times to get the DB_NAME, DB_USER, etc. set up correctly. With my server, they prefix the DB name and username with the name of your site (so “mylogin” for “myDb” becomes “myDb_mylogin”, etc.) During the process of figuring this out and uploading new wp-config.php files, I was actually FTP’ing my updated wp-config.php file into the wp-admin directory (where the admin.php file lives), rather than into the “root” directory of the blog, which is one level higher. All my tweaks were going into the wrong directory, leaving my original (invalid) config file unchanged. Once I updated the correct “wp-config.php” file in the root of my blog, it worked like a charm. Five-minute-plus-twelve-hour-setup complete.
Hope this helps.
