For those who are encountering setup problems: If you are trying to setup ruby on rails on Windows using mysql and you see this ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid Select COUNT(*) Check out this page here: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/MySQL+Database+access+problem Specifically check out this advice: >I have the same problem. >Including the same error as above when trying to install mysql >extension via gem. >I also tried to comment old_password in my.ini file and to create >a new rails user, but it didn`t work. >However, using my old user/password and commenting the line >require 'active_record/vendor/mysql411' from mysql_adapter.rb >worked for me. >BTW: mysql 4.1.12 and windows. For whatever reason this wasn't being picked up by the Google index; hopefully that will change with this post.