MySQL won't start

[hadien]

I run a personal server where I tinker with webbuilding. recently I decided I wanted to play around coding up some HTML5. well it turns out my version of Zend Server didn't support the html5 doctype (version 4.0.6) as I read somewhere that it was added later. since it has been a couple years I thought it would be a good ea to go ahead and update anyway. problem was I didn't remember that there were 2 different editions (the regular and community edition). I was using the CE and downloaded the other version. well I got it installed and it started saying that I need a license for 'just' a 30-day trial. I knew something was wrong so I went back and looked around.

and of course there was a community edition (which wasn't mentioned anywhere on the same page that I downloaded the other version). so I went ahead and downloaded that, uninstalled the professional edition so I could install CE. made sure my httpd.conf file was correct and everything. but now when I try to load up my site I get fatal errors telling that the MySQL database is actively refusing connections. I check to see if its running in services (which its not) and try to start it, only to have it tell me that it can't start it as it terminated unexpectedly. I try run the command line from the shortcut in my start menu, yet it says "this action is only valid for products currently installed". My database files are still there and backed up but I can't access them.

is it that when I installed the other version it "locked" mySQL and didn't unlock it when I tried un-/reinstalling?

[hadien]

So I thought about trying to uninstall MySQL and then reinstalling. I looked around and deleted the ib_logfile0, ib_logfile1, and ibdata1 and ran the MySQLInstanceConfig (it just freezes when it attempts to start the service. I then tried running the command-line "msqld --remove". it simply states that the service doesn't exist. however its still listed as "MySQL_ZendServer51" in my services (which still won't start cause of the 1067 error).


when I run msqld without parameters I get this message:
[Warning] ' --default-character-set' is deprecated and will be removed in a future release please use '--character-set-server' instead