Database driven website

I bought version 4 of this book and finally decided to get to work. I have a windows xp machine that already had MySQL 2005 on it so I thought I had a jump on everything. But when I opened the configuration manager nothing matches up with what is in the book and I cannot find a place to go that is the same.
I can’t find anything that refers to server type, database useage, connection limit etc.
Is that because it is already installed? Should I assume since it is already on my machine that it is installed correctly and move onto php?
I have tried for 2 years to figure Mysql out and it keeps kicking my butt. I had hoped this book was my answer.
Krisj

mysql doesn’t have a 2005 version, but microsoft sql server has a 2005 version

mysql’s latest version is 5.5

Thank you. I will have to download MySQL then as I don’t have a way to understand the Microsoft SQL.