Changing the purp color & Admin Login problem

Hello, I've been tinkering around with and trying to perfect the look of the guestbook on my homepage. I love the site and everything about the gbook, hats off to you guys, but I've got some problems.

Ok first of all, I can't install the gbook unless I do it through cPanel (which installs 2.3.3). When I try to install it the manual way, I get stuck at the install.php while trying to create the DB and tables, constantly giving me "access denied for user blah" or whatever. I've tried everything for countless hours, and read through all 5 pages of posts with no luck. So I said screw it and just stuck with the cPanel install. Ok so cPanel installs it just fine and the gbook works, but the Admin Login doesn't work at all. I've tried everything here too. I mean everything. Used every combo of UN/PW, tried Carbonize's reset script with no luck as well. After the first run it says that it reset successfully, but still won't let me log in with defaults or anything else. When run a second time I get the error: "Could not reset the username and password because: " and then blank. BTW when I installed it through cPanel, it requested an Admin user/pass, and after it installs the script, those don't work at all, neither do defaults, neither does anything else under the sun. Here is the table info for AUTH just incase it helps:
test *23AE809DDACAF96AF0FD78ED04B6A265E05AA257 cd2c6d5e457641991d52da8fb6d87c08 1013100791

As you can see, it changed the username to test correctly, but the password still isn't working as 123 nor anything else

The second thing I'm having a problem with is finding out which file to edit in order to change that purplish color (#7878BE). You can view my guestbook here: www.spacefork.com/guestbook/view.php. Thanks in advance!

Edit: oh just FYI:
PHP version 4.3.11
MySQL version 4.1.13-standard

You could try Lazarus Guestbook. The link is in my signature.

Hey, I appreciate the reply, and I've considered changing (wish I stuck with yours in the first place) but the thought of having to re-edit all of the files to suit the look of my site is slightly intimidating after spending so much time. But then again I could always install yours and see if it still has the annoying install problems. I'll let you know how it goes

If you go look at the new version. I think you will like it. He has simplfied all of it.

Well it installed correctly this time... but I still can't login as Admin

Although I really do enjoy how simplified all of the files are, will be fun to edit and see if things are easier to change.

Edit: just tried dropping all of the MySQL entries and re-running the install with blank settings so that the defaults are used, but they still don't work. So discouraging

You installed Lazarus and cannot login as admin? Tried my password reset script?

yeah, I tried using the normal script first hosted on this site for a super long time then I decided to call it quits and try Laz's with the same exact problem. I just now tried running your script with Laz's but I just keep getting this error:

Could not reset the username and password because:

and no error, just blank. I'll try resetting the actual encrypted entry in the database to that one in the other thread that translates to "123" and see if that works with Laz's...

The Lazarus database and Advanced Guestbook database are almost identical. If you have phpMyAdmin you can easily change the password that way.

Yeah I can use phpMyAdmin, I just wasn't sure if changing the PW to actual text would work since it looks like it's encrpyted in there right now, but I'll try anyway.

Nope, still won't let me log in. Invalid UN/PW as usual

When you are browsing the book_auth table type in your new password as plain text then select Password from the drop down list of functions.

Out of all this time I never bothered to choose Password functions list, but even after doing that it still doesn't work

This has been happening a lot with many people. What version of MySQL are you using?

PHP version 4.3.11
MySQL version 4.1.13-standard

I appreciate your help a ton btw, if I wind up getting this to work I'll have a celebration

Ok we got the login problem fixed. As to the purple that is set in Style and is Table Header Background Color. The file that contains it is body.php.

Thanks a ton Carbon, you're a life saver. And just incase any readers are having the same problem as me but worried because they *still* can't fix it, it's not necessarily broken, try to get one of your friends to log in from his computer to make sure, that's what the problem was in my case (still unsure why, probably cached somewhere either on my computer or my ISP or my host, who knows).