Jon,

Look in you mysql folder. You will find 4 sample configuration files. They have an extension cnf, so they will have a file type SpeedDial, and no extension displays. The names are my-small, my-medium, my-large, my-huge.
I remember the initial setup to be most like my-small.

Open one with a text editor (Notepad) and you can see what variables can be set to tweek your setup and an idea of what those values might be.

You should find c:\my.cnf. You will also find c:\WINNT\my.ini. Both files are
used if both are found. It reads my.ini first, then my.cnf. Anything in my.cnf
will override anything in my.ini. It's recommended that you delete my.cnf on windows machines to keep things simple.

When you do the import, it saves time to create indexes after the tables have
been built. mysqldump will create a script that does not work this way. Since
you already have tables defined, it might be better to TRUNCATE your tables,
drop all indexes, use LOAD DATA INFILE to load the tables, then add all indexes
back. To export the data from your live db, look for "INTO OUTFILE" in mySql
docs.