Technology is great! Until …

…it isn’t.

The other day our power went out for a second or two, then came back on. That was long enough for my computer to go off. Windows has always bee cranky about shutting the system down properly and, of course, just cutting the power to the machine isn’t a ‘proper’ shutdown sequence.

I’ve been busy with other things since then, but today I got back to doing some development work. I had things rolling along smoothly, the system was working properly, and all was right with the world.

I have the XAMPP package installed so I can use the Apache web server, MySQL databases and the PHP language to build web apps. I started up Apache then tried to start the MySQL database. And got an error. I tried logging into the database though the command line. No go. Fuggle me blue.

I had just finished getting one of the databases set up and working the other day before the power outage. I didn’t want all that work to go to waste. I launched Google, started searching for solutions and went far down the rabbit hole.

After trying many different solutions I finally managed to get the MySQL database working again. Caliwandalous! However, part of the process ended up reinstalling MySQL, which is fine, but by default it sets the root user password to blank. That means when you startup the database and it asks for the password, you just hit enter without putting anything in, and it lets you in. This is not a Good Thing(tm), even if you are just doing development on your local computer. So I changed the password, using a SQL statement, and got an odd message I’ve never gotten before when changing the root password about single quotes not inputting the new password as expected. WTF?

I tried logging in using the new password. No luck. I tried logging in using no password. No luck. I tried logging in using the password with single quotes around it. Still no luck.

Fuggle me blue. Again.

Down another rabbit hole trying to fix the screwed up root password. After a total of five and a half hours trying to solve all this, I decided to just backup the important shtuff, scrap everything, and start over. I uninstalled the XAMPP package, reinstalled it, put the important shtuff back in place, and launched the MySQL server.

It worked. Caliwandalous!

I changed the default root password from blank to something else. It worked. Caliwandalous! Again!

Then I tried to start the Apache web server. I go the usual ‘Attempting to run Apache …’ message and waited. And waited. And waited.

Fuggle me blue. One more time.

I went down another rabbit hole trying to get it to start. No luck. I tried uninstalling the XAMPP package. It hung up and wouldn’t uninstall.

At this point I’m tired of adulting. I’m throwing in the towel and will tackle it again in the morning.

And just because I know someone is going to ask, yes, I tried reversing the polarity on the Cornell trans-capacitors. No, it didn’t help.

I hope your tech is behaving, my Hordeling.

If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum