[garynitely]

@"runningnaked" 

thanks so much, you're very first suggestion appears to have done the trick. just changed the password in the advancedsettings.xml file to 'kodi' and my library is now importing nicely, fingers crossed this will resolve everything, will do the same on my RPi once this has finished.

i had run the command properly in step two, but i had taken the instructions in step four to put in the 'username/password of your MySQL database' to mean the password i had selected for the MySQL server in step one! just a case of a rookie not following the instructions as carefully as i should have done. i clearly didn't read step two clearly enough, where it states that:CREATE USER 'kodi' IDENTIFIED BY 'kodi';
'The first portion of the first command creates the user, the second portion creates the password'
i never your have thought 'IDENTIFIED BY' related to the password in the advancedsettings.xml file. i basically did exactly as you suggested by mixing up the passwords.

thanks a lot, hugely appreciated!

Gary