BTW the backup/install needs some more help/cleanup I think, but I'm out of time lately and Joe is more insider in this matter then me, so you can talk to him when he will be back next week.

YOU are the man !!! thanks your 2nd  suggestion works.

I noticed that under the install section of the forum many people struggle with the same problem as I described in 1)

In first case you should have access to admin account with password 'password'.
Please ensure you have correct database connection parameters in config_db.php file.

In the second case you can upload en_US-new.sql script from /sql to /admin/backup directory and restore database from this one. This file contains some basic records, but there is no any sample data. Don't  forget to make new fiscal period for 2008 year as the data are a little outdated.

Janusz

I tried to do several clean/fresh steups

1) running the clean setup script on a new  database - then running install with out table creation option  result - does not recoginise any users - root or admin

2) as above but with table creation at install, over rides clean install but works

Is there a way to flush data in 2 ?

Attila