this workflow assumes you are using the WP-DB-Backup plugin (I highly recommend) to backups of your mysql/wordpress db. Also am assuming that you use the mysql gui tools to interact with your desktop db (also highly recommended)

1. do a database backup with WP-DB-Backup
1. optional: save the archived .gz in your backups folder, nested inside a dated directory, and expand here … you will need to expand this either way
2. expand downloaded .gz if you didn’t do it in 1.1
2. download wp folder (or whatever the name of your root install is) via ftp
1. optional: download this into your backups folder, nested inside a dated directory. Copy the wp directory to your inetpub folder
2. if haven’t already done so in 2.1, move wp directory into inetpub folder
3. change permissions on this folder so that user has read/script execute permissions on all child objects
3. open up mysql query browser
1. make your wp schema default (or create one if you don’t already have a schema for wp)
2. next, file > open script > [browse to path of (expanded) .sql file saved with WP-DB-Backup]
3. execute this query
4. inside the wp_options change the following parameters to equal your new localhost install rather than the previous web install
1. siteurl
2. home
3. any other options from plugins which have an external path defined