I recently installed MySQL v3.23.38-nt under Windows 2000 and set it up to run as a service. It worked at first, then it stopped. When I try to start it manually, I get the message "Cannot start the MySql service on the Local Computer. Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly."

I don't know what made it stop, but I can't get it to work again. It still runs fine as a standalone process, though.

MySQL's base directory is E:\Program Files\mySQL. The data directory is D:\Program Files\mySQL\data. There's also a data directory in the base directory, though, so MySQL should run without a data directory specified explicitly (and does, standalone).

I've read through this list's archives, and the only relevant advice I found (repeated many times) was that my base directory is incorrectly specified in C:\my.cnf. I've examined it many times, though, and I can't see anything wrong with it:

[mysqld] port=3306 . . . basedir = E:\Program Files\mySQL

I've also tried every variation I could think of (double backslashes, double backslashes in quotes, forward slashes, etc) without luck.

Can anyone tell me what is wrong, or at least suggest what to look for? I'm completely stuck. I've even tried reinstalling MySQL and reinstalling the service definition, without luck.