I have looked at the settings a great number of times but run into the same issue. When connected to my Linux box with the 'exact' same settings, no fault. When run on a fresh machine with xampp for testing:
SQLSTATE[28000] [1045] Access denied for user 'user'@'localhost' (using password: YES)
I'm positive the user name, privileges and password are the same so anything else I could be missing?