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

shell> C:\mysql\bin\mysqlshow
shell> C:\mysql\bin\mysqlshow -u root mysql
shell> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin version status proc
shell> C:\mysql\bin\mysql test

If mysqld is slow to respond to TCP/IP connections from client programs on Windows 9x/Me, 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 numbers 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 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. As of MySQL 4.1, you can use the --protocol=PIPE option instead.

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 in order to connect with the MySQL Server. See Section 4.2.2, “Connecting to the MySQL Server”.

There are two versions of the MySQL command-line tool on Windows:

To use mysqlc, you must have a copy of the cygwinb19.dll library installed somewhere that mysqlc can find it. If your distribution does not have the cygwinb19.dll library in the bin directory under the base directory of your MySQL installation, look for it in the lib directory and copy it to your Windows system directory (\Windows\system or a similar place).

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