Frustrating install

hello all – i’m a newbie so please if i’m being overly stupid please forgive me

I’ve gone through the 5 minute install which has taken 5 hours! & it still doesn’t work… anyway the message on the page i get is

Error establishing a database connection
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.

Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
Are you sure that the database server is running?

yeah – server’s up & username & password correct with Hostgator so ‘localhost’ is the DB_Host name

can someone please help – I’m going nuts – its incredibly frustrating when i seem to be doing everything like they say…

many thanks
Richard