So today without any procrastination, I intend to put down the simplest of the steps to configure and run MySQL on Windows XP in the quickest of the time. First and foremost, as I always tend to follow a course is, break down the task into 3 steps. They are:

Step 1: Getting the software

Download the latest version of MySQL from the community site. Unpack it into your desired folder. It is always a good practice to download the zipped archive of MySQL binary distribution since using the one click installer, you might sometimes lose the power of configuration manually.

Its also a better way to understand configuring manually since if you switch to a Unix based environment later on, you will have to carry out a similar procedure and there is usually no one click installer in such environments.

I unpacked MySQL in C:\Program Files\mysql-5.0.45-win32

Step 2 : Configuring the environment

While configuring in the Windows environment you have to do two things. One, putting a file having a name my.ini in the Windows folder of the operating system. Two, setting the path in your system environment variable. Here’s what you have to do:

Creating Option File (my.ini)

Go to your installation path of MySQL (In my case it is: C:\Program Files\mysql-5.0.45-win32) and rename the file my-medium.ini to my.ini. Open the renamed file in notepad and add the following lines, just beneath the line which says, # The MySQL server and above the line port = 3306:

[mysqld]
# set basedir to your installation path
basedir=C:/Program Files/mysql-5.0.45-win32
# set datadir to the location of your data directory
datadir=D:/workspace/data

The second line as shown above is, configuring your database directory. This means, the path which you assign to datadir will be the path where your databases will be created. You have to make sure that the path exists before you assign it. There will a data directory in the MySQL installed path. If you provide a different path to the data directory than this default one, you must copy the entire contents of the data directory in that path.

Finally, drop the my.ini file into your Windows directory. In my case, I copied the file into the path C:/Windows

Setting the environment variable

After completing the above step, goto

My Computer > Properties > Advanced >Environment Variables > System variables > Path > Edit

In the Value box, goto the end of the line and put a semi colon and the path of the MySQL bin folder. In my case I have put it as:

;C:\Program Files\mysql-5.0.45-win32\bin

Click OK 3 times and thats it with the configuration of MySQL. You are all set to test the installation.

Step 3: Final Configurations and Running MySQL

You are actually good to go for running mysql. For this, open up your command prompt and type in the command mysqld –console. This will start the mysql database server. Whenever you run this command henceforth you will see these lines at the end:

[Note] mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: ’5.0.45-community-nt-log’ socket: ” port: 3306 MySQL Community Edit
ion (GPL)

When you see these lines, it means that mysql has started successfully. Its time to party!

Leave the command prompt open and start up another command prompt. For the first time you should do this:

C:\>mysql -u root -p
Enter password:

When it will ask for a password, just hit Enter. It will allow access to you without a password and will show up a prompt as:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 12
Server version: 5.0.45-community-nt-log MySQL Community Edition (GPL)

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the buffer.

mysql>

Note that your database has anonymous access. It is not a secure thing to let it like that. You should always access the database with a password. So for setting up the password you will have to do the below steps. Put in the commands which are highlighted as shown:

mysql> update user set password=PASSWORD(“admin”) where User=’root’;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 3 Changed: 0 Warnings: 0

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> quit
Bye

Once you have done this, try logging into the server again without a password. It must show the below error:

C:\Documents and Settings\xpuser>mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@'localhost’ (using password: NO)

This means, now your database is secure.You should be relieved that your mysql setup has got completed. Now every time you want to start in your database start the server in one command prompt and in the second command prompt login to the database server by doing:

C:\>mysql -u root -p
Enter password: admin

Thats it. Phew! I hope I remember the steps myself and now for my cup of cappuccino.

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What is Windows Live Writer?

Live Writer is a power blogging tool which helps in offline blogging. If you are a regular blogger then you might have used the ScribeFire Firefox addon. But Windows Live Writer is not just an addon its a full fledged blogging platform with many blog rich features. The features are fully in synch with the WordPress platform.

The best part of blogging in Live Writer is that, it has a facility of providing you the actual template from the blog layout while you blog. This makes you feel as if you are directly writing on your blog layout than in the standard WordPress TinyMCE editor.

Installation Steps

• For installation of Live Writer make sure you have the following system requirements. More important that it requires a .Net Framework.
• Download the Live Tools Installer. This installer is not the Live Writer Installer. Instead it is general purpose installer and lets you select more products to install if needed.
• Start the installation from WLinstaller.exe
• Accept the agreement policy.
• Uncheck all the check boxes. They are optional utilities.
• The installer then downloads the Live Writer installation. Please be patient as it takes quite a lot of time if you have slow connection.
• You don’t have to do check anything. The installation would immediately after the download is complete.
• Follow the further steps which include putting the login credentials, blog URL.
• Allow the installation to detect the blog layout settings and post a temporary post to verify. It won’t affect your blog since no test post is published.
• Start the Writer and blast away with your writing. Enjoy!

Live Writer makes you feel as if you are working in the WordPress environment itself. Blogging with it will surely enthral you. Try it out and you will see the difference for yourself.

Also do check out the gallery of Live Writer Plugins and also the CodePlex development zone to make your blogging experience even more enjoyable.

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Piclens is a slideshow presenter for convenient viewing of websites which have stack loads of photos. You name it, Flickr, Facebook, Google Images, Yahoo Images, Picasa Web Albums and any other. You may have never witnessed such a slideshow before within a browser. When you install this plugin and browse any of the above site, the pictures get a tiny play button displayed on the bottom. The instant you hit this play button your get transferred into wonderland. Believe me, its true.

Piclens has been developed by the same people who gave us the yet another amazing plugin, CoolIris. Its usage is very simple. Install, restart Firefox and hover on to an image heavy site and click play button. For example, visit my Flickr photostream and hover your mouse over any of the pictures. Your would notice the play button and when its clicked your browser will be transformed into a full screen slideshow presenter as shown below:

However, there are two glitches. One which would dampen this eye catching effect is your bandwidth. Try it, only if you have loads of it. Another is, this plugin works on Firefox only if your platform is Windows. So Linux guys will probably have to wait for it for some time.

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The specialty of the Bliss wallpapers is the unique way of the lawn which spreads apart to about half way up to the screen and the above half is taken by different types of skies. This blue and lush green combination of colors brings a sense of peace and looks pleasant to the eye.

Original Bliss Wallpaper

Since then “Bliss” has gone several changes in its form from the proposed one in Longhorn to the one which now would be seen in Vista.

Longhorn Bliss Wallpaper

With the launch of the new Windows Vista and its hi-tech appearance “Bliss” too has been transformed to suit its rich Vista GUI. The first look at the new “Bliss” wallpaper (although I don’t think its the official one) is impressive but a prolonged look is slightly damper to its original counterpart.

Vista Bliss Wallpaper

But the most fascinating of all the wallpapers that I have come across in the “Bliss” category is the following one which I have named it as “Elegant Bliss” which is a very professional looking wallpaper and which currently serves my home and office desktops!

Elegant Bliss

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So what is the solution to the defamed 34 minute XP installation hangup problem?
Its as simple as deleting a simple file which caused the installation to freeze.

• Let the XP hang up at 34 minutes remaining for the first time
• remove the CD from the CDROM and reboot
• Dont enter the CD when the installation asks for it, instead open the DOS prompt (Shift + F10)
• goto C:/Windows and type setupapi.log, hit enter
• The setupapi.log file opens in a notepad
• Scroll to the very last few lines in the file and search for the word “inf”
• You will notice that in the last few moments the installation created a file with the extension “.inf” before dying out (in my case it was the faulty modem for which XP created the file mdmcxpt.inf).
• It means that the device mentioned in the last few lines is faulty and you have to make the installation skip through it.
• Close the notepad and go to the folder C:/windows/inf in command prompt
• Browse through the files to find the “.inf” which was related to the faulty device.
• Straightaway delete the inf file (eg: del mdmcxpt.inf)
• now put in the XP installation CD and Continue the installation

It will not put in the drivers related to the faulty device and so it wont freeze this time !!

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1. Introduction of tabs – The most irritating feature in the tabs is that if ther is a single tab the cross mark to close it is not visible (i.e you ougt to close the window!!). Mozilla handles this very well in a way that it shows tabs only when there is more than one tab which is more smarter. In IE7 you would definitely start searching for the close button when only one tab is present
2. Glossy interface (looks more like Opera to me) – not needed at all since it is the culprit for literally sucking memory from your RAM.
3. Anti phishing (not tried it out yet)
4. Improvised feed processing and access- Being a mozilla user and using its simplified feed access techniques I found this in IE7 out to be little more than useless. For reading a feed you have to click on the feed and then it loads up in a page. I use mozilla Firefox with Sage extension for reading feeds and I am more comfortable in it.
5. Tiled collection of open pages (not found in any other browsers) – this is definitely king size in memory consumption. I couldnt believe my eyes when I found my mouse pointer going in a frame by frame motion in the tiled mode and to talk about my system running on 1.5GHz with 384 MB DDR RAM !!

Memory Consumption – I tried single instance of browser with an empty page and made a comparison

• IE6 – 16 to 18 MB
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 – 20 to 21 MB (even two tabs took 24 MB)
• IE7 RC1 – a whopping 40 MB and 47 MB for two tabs and 50 MB in tiled mode

The annoying thing about using IE 7 is there is no menu bar in the default view. People who have become used to the menu bar for common tasks would surely be left in wonderland !! For that you have to enable it appears beneath the address bar which is again a pain in the eye.

I guess only using only these features I feel like reverting back to Mozilla beacuse I am confident none can beat it be it in the number of extensions beign developed or the number of custom search engines. Mozilla Rulez!!

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