Upon upgrading a customers site to WordPress 2.8.2 the other day I was met by the most unlikely of problems. WordPress asked for my connection information with a pop window, and no matter what I put in nothing would work.
The site was hosted on our servers at Shasta Web Host so I was really certain the problem wasn’t there. After hours of fumbling with wp-config.php and a host of other fixes that did not work I gave up. Sometimes the best way to fix something is to get away from it for a while.
This in particular installations hosting was set up by my customer on a Windows server. I switched over to a Linux without hitch and the mysterious Connection Request disappeared. WordPress appears to have an affinity for a Linux server. Although the switch required no work on my part at all I would recommend backing up the data base and the site files.
I hope this is of a benefit for those who have tried everything, and before starting everything check to see what server your host is using.