Can't Create/write To Database And Temp Directories

I'm quite new to mySQL, and am having problems being able to create database tables. I'm on my [5th] setup of mySQL/apache/php, just after formatting windows, and everything else seems to be working, and working together, so I'm assuming the installation is ok. I can create databases, but when I try to create a table, I get this error message:

ERROR 1 (HY000): Can't create/write to file '.customermidian.frm' (Errcode: 2)

I'm assuming I haven't set up my temp folder correctly, but I don't understand how it works properly. After reading the mySQL maual repeatedly, I tried using

--tmp=c: emp

to set it, and it didn't seem to work, and I created a my.ini file with this in it:

[mysqld]
tmpdir=C:/temp

is there anything else I can try? I am logging into mySQL with the root account, and a password.