Re: MySQL Error number 2003???

[Bill Karwin]

The response when you telnet to 3306 is not supposed to be human-readable. It's responding as though the MySQL client is contacting it, with its proprietary protocol that is used between MySQL client and MySQL server.

Using telnet to test the connection is recommended only to test that the connection succeeds; the response you see from the server is not the issue.

Try the same telnet test, but this time running telnet from your Windows PC. There's a simple telnet client built into Windows, and you can run it from the command-line just like on Linux.

The test is meant to demonstrate that there is still some firewall preventing the Windows PC from contacting the server on that port. Note that firewalls can run on the server, blocking incoming connections, but firewalls can also run on the client PC, blocking outgoing connections. Some antivirus/antispyware programs also block outgoing connections.