I am currently using winxp, wamp5 (downloaded and installed today), cmsms 0.11.2, apache 2.0.55, 2.7.0-pl2, PHP/5.1.2, MySQL 5.0.18. I also use zonealarm.
I tried to start cmsms today after not using it for ages. I couldn't log in because I forgot my admin password. I decided to reinstall cmsms (it also needed upgrading). It installed to the point of getting successfully to the front page, but when I tried to log in to admin, it kept coming back to the admin login page. It didn't say the user or pass was incorrect, it just had the same page load, and in the status bar, it reads "waiting for localhost", then "done" (I noticed that the access log had a lot of 302's if that helps). I was running another cmsms localhost setup at another computer two days ago, so I know I have the ability to install correctly, just not today

This may be really obvious, and I'm sorry if it is - I have little previous experience with cms/mysql/php. So far I have tried the following over the last few hours: I created a new database and created a user with cms priviledges. I uninstalled easyphp and installed current version of wamp (purely because someone recommended it in the forum here), I tried installing cmsms maybe about 10 times with different directory names, with exactly the same result. I tried shutting zone alarm down, tried changing the admin folder name, checked config settings. Cleared cookies, restarted wamp, tried to change the cms_user password using wishy's suggested one in a forum response.
All this is leading me to believe that it's something really blindingly obvious that I haven't checked.
I am going to try and install another cms in the meantime just to see if it's a localhost problem (but trust me I'm stuck on cmsms!

Thankyou in advance for your help! Christine