mysqld: Can't change dir to data. Server doesn't start

Question

I installed a MySQL server with installer and it started. After reboot I tried to start it again and get the error:

D:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.         


        

Answer 1

In my case, I had installed the data directory to a different location. So the data directory really wasn't in the default location. Therefore, when I ran the mysqld command from the command prompt, I had to specify the data directory manually:

mysqld --datadir=D:/MySQLData/Data

Here's the documentation for mysqld command-line arguments.