MySQL dying on startup

I ended up just uninstalling and reinstalling MySQL, and it's working fine now.
Thanks!

I had this error after running out of harddisk space. I finally solved it by deleting ib*.tmp files from C:\Windows\temp which were causing the startup to fail, even for data directories that were previously working.

Aleksandar

Almost three years after your post, it is still helping people (well, specifically - me)! Thanks for that. Deleting the ib_logfileXX 'saved me'! MySQL 5.0 service would not start with a system error of 1067 on a Windows 2003 server SP2 + fully patched. After deleting the files I was able to start the service. Problem occurred after a power outage at my ISP. MySQL had been running fine for the two years prior to that moment.

Just in case it helps someone else find this page in the future I am posting the info from my error log file:

InnoDB: Log scan progressed past the checkpoint lsn 6 3854032829
120302 17:36:11  InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally!
InnoDB: Starting crash recovery.
InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files...
InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite
InnoDB: buffer...
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 6 3854504678
120302 17:36:13  InnoDB: Starting an apply batch of log records to the database...
InnoDB: Progress in percents: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 120302 17:36:13 - mysqld got exception 0xc0000005 ;
This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary
or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built,
or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware.
We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose
the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong
and this may fail.

key_buffer_size=8388608
read_buffer_size=65536
max_used_connections=0
max_threads=100
threads_connected=0
It is possible that mysqld could use up to 
key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_threads = 36422 K
bytes of memory
Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation.

thd: 0x0
Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out
where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went
terribly wrong...
006FCC74    mysqld.exe!mach_read_from_1()[mach0data.ic:37]
00707A5E    mysqld.exe!rec_get_bit_field_1()[rem0rec.ic:189]
00707CAA    mysqld.exe!rec_get_n_owned()[rem0rec.ic:462]
006CDEB1    mysqld.exe!page_rec_find_owner_rec()[page0page.ic:683]
007192A6    mysqld.exe!page_cur_insert_rec_low()[page0cur.c:1001]
00719940    mysqld.exe!page_cur_rec_insert()[page0cur.ic:208]
00719D3E    mysqld.exe!page_cur_parse_insert_rec()[page0cur.c:847]
0071382F    mysqld.exe!recv_parse_or_apply_log_rec_body()[log0recv.c:814]
007143F1    mysqld.exe!recv_recover_page()[log0recv.c:1294]
006EA57F    mysqld.exe!buf_page_io_complete()[buf0buf.c:2033]
006E2BE2    mysqld.exe!fil_aio_wait()[fil0fil.c:4273]
006BB59D    mysqld.exe!io_handler_thread()[srv0start.c:437]
77E6482F    kernel32.dll!GetModuleHandleA()
The manual page at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/crashing.html contains
information that should help you find out what is causing the crash.

0xc0000005 is what, an "Access Violation" error? Sounds like (a) there's a bug - a bad pointer triggered an attempt to "touch" memory that is protected, resulting in the OS slapping its fingers, or (b) you have some bad RAM installed, and a bad spot is triggering a pointer to access memory that is protected, resulting in the same yada-yada as (a).

If you re-install MySQL, would it be possible to install v5.0 instead of v5.1? There were initial reports of 5.1 having some stability issues when compared to 5.0, although I'm sure that those issues have been addressed by now...of course, if you are using features specific to 5.1, that's out of the question...

006B8853 mysqld.exe!srv_parse_data_file_paths_and_sizes()[srv0start.c:211]

Seems to indicate that there is a problem parsing your configuration file, I would examine it with a good text editor, check for non ASCII characters and check that all the paths and variables are sensible.