You can test whether the MySQL server is working by executing any of the following commands:

C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysqlshow"
C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysqlshow" -u root mysql
C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysqladmin" version status proc
C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysql" test

If mysqld is slow to respond to TCP/IP connections from client programs, there is probably a problem with your DNS. In this case, start mysqld with the --skip-name-resolve option and use only localhost and IP addresses in the Host column of the MySQL grant tables.

You can force a MySQL client to use a named-pipe connection rather than TCP/IP by specifying the --pipe or --protocol=PIPE option, or by specifying . (period) as the host name. Use the --socket option to specify the name of the pipe if you do not want to use the default pipe name.

Note that if you have set a password for the root account, deleted the anonymous account, or created a new user account, then you must use the appropriate -u and -p options with the commands shown above to connect with the MySQL Server. See Section 4.2.2, “Connecting to the MySQL Server”.

For more information about mysqlshow, see Section 4.5.6, “mysqlshow — Display Database, Table, and Column Information”.