I first decided to try how things were in Windows Vista land, the moment I was told during a talk of mine that MySQL refused to install on Vista. I gave it a twirl (after disabling User Account Control – UAC) and found that I got a rather quaint error message from the MySQL Server Instance Config Wizard (MySQLInstanceConfig.exe) [this after it failed to start once the installer was complete]:<\/p>\n
The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more details.<\/tt><\/p>\n
I hopped over to the event log (Event Viewer), and the error displayed was:<\/p>\n
Activation context generation failed for \"C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.0\\bin\\MySQLInstanceConfig.exe\".Error in manifest or policy file \"C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.0\\bin\\MySQLInstanceConfig.exe\" on line 6. The value \"asAdministrator\" of attribute \"level\" in element \"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1^requestedPrivileges\" is invalid.<\/tt><\/p>\n
I then thought, that the best solution was to launch it manually. I tried:
C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.0\\bin\\mysqld-nt.exe<\/tt><\/p>\n
via cmd.exe, and lo and behold, it all just worked!<\/p>\n
For a more permanent solution, look at Resource Hacker<\/a>, and read the instructions in this forum post<\/a><\/b>.<\/p>\n It turns out, this is largely related to mysql#30823<\/a>. There is a problem with the software manifest, that doesn’t allow MySQLInstanceConfig.exe to run in Vista. This sadly affects MySQL 5.0.51a (refer to mysql#34340<\/a>), and the hope is that the next release fixes this (the documentation has already mentioned that 5.1.24-rc should have this fixed, and 6.0.x will get a push soon.)<\/p>\n In other news? If you haven’t seen MySQL on Windows: Configuration and Install<\/a>, take a look. Its from Microsoft’s Port25 website (i.e. the open source group within Microsoft). I was truly impressed\/shocked when I came across it. I especially like the note: “This paper represents testing and documentation in a lab environment. User Account Control (UAC) is an essential security component to Windows and Microsoft does not recommend turning off UAC in production environments.”<\/i> Sorry, UAC and MySQL just do not jive (though it seems to be OK, once the installation is compelte – i.e. you can enable UAC again).<\/p>\n Technorati Tags: mysql<\/a>, windows<\/a>, bug<\/a>, UAC<\/a>, instance config wizard<\/a>, resource hacker<\/a>, microsoft<\/a><\/p>\nShare this:<\/h3>