accidently installed another version of mysql over existing server

[ryan birk]

Hi:

I am not a SQL guru by any means. I run a wordpress website on my PC at home using the XAMPP package and it uses MySQL to drive the wordpress site.

Last week I attempted to install a program called Media Portal which is like windows media center to watch/record TV. What I did not realize at the time is that Media Portal requires MySQL and the package automatically installed another instance of MySQL on my computer. It did not overwrite the MySQL data files or directory structure installed with the wordpress site so I essentially have all my original MySQL files and a new set of MySQL files. I am looking for some advice.

My first thought is to dump my database in the new database, uninstall the new version of MySQL and somehow just re-start the existing MySQL and import the dump file. For clarification, I DO NOT have dump files of the database data from the old MySQL, I only have .IDB and .FRM files. What I can't figure out is how to get the old MySQL to start up again. Can this be done without uninstalling the new MySQL (stop new MySQL service, then somehow register service for old MySQL and start it)?

Another option I was considering was to keep the new MySQL server instance and somehow import the database from the old MySQL .IDB and .FRM files. I have done extensive searching on this and it looks like this is extremely complicated and might be beyond my capabilities.

A last resort is to just ditch the entire wordpress site and reinstall it and rebuilid my website. It is not a big website and probably will take 30-40 hours. So if recovering my database tables will take anywhere near that amount of time, I would probably just opt to rebuild the website.

Any help or recommendations would be appreciated!

-Ryan