No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it (PHP / WAMP)

1. Go to C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql[your-version]\data
2. Copy and save "ib_logfile0" and "ib_logfile1" anywhere else.
3. delete "ib_logfile0" and ib_logfile1

Did the trick for me. hope it works for you too.

Its working fine. But we will have to stop apache and mysql, We need to quit xampp and then delete file. when deleted successfully. now start xampp it will work properly..

Just Go to your Control-panel and start Apache & MySQL Services.

You might need:

• In wamp\bin\mysql\mysqlX.X.XX\my.ini find these lines:

  [client]
...
port = 3308
...
[wampmysqld64]
...
port = 3308

As you see, the port number is 3308 (or maybe 3306). You should :

• use that port in applications, like WordPress: define('DB_HOST', 'localhost:3308')

or

• change it globally in wamp\bin\apache\apache2.X.XXX\bin\php.ini change mysqli.default_port = ... to 3308

Till yesterday I was able to connect to phpMyAdmin, but today I started getting this error:

2002-no-connection-could-be-made-because-the-target-machine-actively-refused

None of the answers here really helped me fix the problem, what helped me is shared below:

I looked at the mysql logs.[C:\wamp\logs\mysql.log]

It said

2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Using atomics to ref count buffer pool pages
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use Windows interlocked functions
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Not using CPU crc32 instructions
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Highest supported file format is Barracuda.
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: The log sequence numbers 1765410 and 1765410 in ibdata files do not match the log sequence number 2058233 in the ib_logfiles!
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Database was not shutdown normally!
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Starting crash recovery.
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files...
2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [ERROR] InnoDB: Attempted to open a previously opened tablespace. Previous tablespace harley/login_confirm uses space ID: 6 at filepath: .\harley\login_confirm.ibd. Cannot open tablespace testdb/testtable which uses space ID: 6 at filepath: .\testdb\testtable.ibd
InnoDB: Error: could not open single-table tablespace file .\testdb\testtable.ibd
InnoDB: We do not continue the crash recovery, because the table may become
InnoDB: corrupt if we cannot apply the log records in the InnoDB log to it.
InnoDB: To fix the problem and start mysqld:
InnoDB: 1) If there is a permission problem in the file and mysqld cannot
InnoDB: open the file, you should modify the permissions.
InnoDB: 2) If the table is not needed, or you can restore it from a backup,
InnoDB: then you can remove the .ibd file, and InnoDB will do a normal
InnoDB: crash recovery and ignore that table.
InnoDB: 3) If the file system or the disk is broken, and you cannot remove
InnoDB: the .ibd file, you can set innodb_force_recovery > 0 in my.cnf
InnoDB: and force InnoDB to continue crash recovery here.

I got the clue that this guy is creating a problem - InnoDB: Error: could not open single-table tablespace file .\testdb\testtable.ibd

and this line 2015-09-18 01:16:30 5920 [Note] InnoDB: Database was not shutdown normally!

hmmm, For me the testdb was just a test-db! hence I decided to delete this file inside C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql5.6.17\data\testdb

and restarted all services, and went to phpMyAdmin, and this time no issues, phpMyAdmin opened :)