The MySQL server can be started manually from the command line. This can be done on any version of Windows.
To start the mysqld server from the command line, you should start a console window (or “DOS window”) and enter this command:
C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysqld"
The path to mysqld may vary depending on the install location of MySQL on your system.
You can stop the MySQL server by executing this command:
C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysqladmin" -u root shutdown
If the MySQL root user account has a
password, you need to invoke mysqladmin
with the -p option and supply the password
when prompted.
This command invokes the MySQL administrative utility
mysqladmin to connect to the server and tell
it to shut down. The command connects as the MySQL
root user, which is the default
administrative account in the MySQL grant system. Note that
users in the MySQL grant system are wholly independent from any
login users under Windows.
If mysqld doesn't start, check the error log
to see whether the server wrote any messages there to indicate
the cause of the problem. The error log is located in the
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server
5.5\data directory. It is the file with
a suffix of .err. You can also try to start
the server as mysqld --console; in this case,
you may get some useful information on the screen that may help
solve the problem.
The last option is to start mysqld with the
--standalone and
--debug options. In this case,
mysqld writes a log file
C:\mysqld.trace that should contain the
reason why mysqld doesn't start. See
MySQL
Internals: Porting.
Use mysqld --verbose --help to display all the options that mysqld supports.