User 1 not created

I went to set up a local Drupal 6, and it went smoothly until the step of creating the main admin user 1. After I entered the info, it went to a blank page. When I retyped in the base address, it went to the page to login and begin setting up the site. But, when I went to login, it told me that I was not an authorized user (with the username and password I just created). Nor would it recognize either a username or email address to email me a password. I checked in the database, and there were still placeholders for User 1. I tried to manually enter the User 1 info in the database, but now when I try to login, it tells me that this user is blocked or not activated. So, I have two questions:

1) What settings should be changed by Drupal when user 1 is set up--i.e. what needs to be manually changed to let me get into the admin account I set up in the database?

2) Is this a more widely occuring bug?