I’m in the process of setting up WordPress on another server running Windows Server 2008 R2 following the same instructions I published for installing on Windows Server 2003 (see the series of articles here).  I ran into some trouble with the step to install phpMyAdmin so I tried to uninstall everything, including PHP and MySQL.  When I went to install MySQL again, it hung at the second step on the Ready to execute page, after the Write configuration file step was checked.

There is a question about this up at the MySQL forums, but the answers didn’t help me.

The one difference I found between the first install and subsequent installs was that the the reinstall asked for the current root password.  This told me that the uninstall program didn’t uninstall everything.  Here are the steps that worked for me on Windows Server 2008 R2.  These steps will probably work on Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 as well.  The steps will be slightly different on Windows Server 2003 or WIndows XP.

  1. Stop the MySQL service.  Not sure why the uninstall program doesn’t offer to do this, but it doesn’t, so you have to do it manually.
  2. Uninstall MySQL.
  3. Delete the following folders:
    1. MySQL program files folder.  For me this was C:\Program Files\MySQL.
    2. MySQL database folder.  For me this was C:\MySQL Datafiles.
    3. MySQL application data folder.  For me this was C:\ProgramData\MySQL.  On a pre-Vista operating system, this will likely be C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MySQL or some such.
      (If someone tries this procedure on a pre-Vista operating system, let me know and I’ll update this info.)
  4. Reinstall MySQL.

The key steps are deleting the above-mentioned folders.  After doing that, MySQL should install just fine.  Hope this helps you out.