Can't establish another instance or Windows service

[Gary Sprunk]

I'm a newbie to setting up client/servers. I have been building a MS Access database for 8 1/2 years, but it reached its file size limit of 1.99 GB. MySQL looks like the perfect choice for its new home--a limit of 2 TB!

I connected to MySQL initially and started importing my whole database. I stopped it after 16 hours--one record every 4 seconds was just too slow! I emptied some tables and tried again. After a few hours the import process stopped and it all shut down. Now I can't establish an instance, if that's what it's called. I'm so frustrated.

I have Windows XP Pro with lots of hard drive space and RAM. When I use the MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard 1.0.8, with username "root" or "127.0.0.1" and Hostname "local" or "localhost" and Port 3306, I Execute and get a red X for Start Service. Error message: "Connection failed with error: MySQL Error Code (2003) Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost'(0)."

At the Windows' ODBC Data Source Administrator User Data Sources, MySQL 5.0 is not listed.

At Services (Local), when I try to start MySQL5, I get "Could not start the MySQL5 service on Local Computer. Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectantly."

I have carefully reinstalled MySQL several times and tried to notice every detail, but I'm at my wit's end. Help!