Thursday, March 10, 2011

MySQL 5.5 Installation / Uninstallation Troubleshooting

Problem: MySQL Instance Configuration: Service fails to start or Security Settings cannot be applied.


Blunt but working solution: 

  1. Uninstall MySQL and MySQL tools.
  2. Restart the computer. 
  3. Delete MySQL Data folder. Typically at C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/MySQL/MySQL Server 5.5/Data/
  4. Delete MySQL folder from Program Files
  5. Re-install MySQL and MySQL tools
Problem: MySQL command line tool can connect to localhost but MySQL Query Browser other third party tools cannot.Also, MySQL command line tool cannot connect to 127.0.0.1!

By default MySQL (5.5 version on Windows XP) binds to "localhost"  (somehow 127.0.0.1 is not same as localhost) and it will accept connections only from localhost.
Since the OS would convert localhost to 127.0.0.1 automatically, other programs are unable to connect. 
(MySQL command line client might be functioning differently Because it can connect using localhost as host name.)

If you want MySQL port to listen on all interfaces add this setting to your my.ini file
bind-address=0.0.0.0

Setups in general may fail if  a registry or file system resource is not accessible due to security restrictions.
I typically secure the Auto Run registry entries and some drives on my machine.