Reinstalled WAMP but not reconnecting to database files (2 replies)

My wife's PC has a WAMP installation with an archive setup of WordPress on it. It suddenly didn't work because a loss of the icon in the Aestan tray menu. I decided to uninstall and re-install. The uninstall left a WAMP folder with WordPress and the Data folders. I then installed a new copy of WAMP.

The new installation has a mysql 5.6.17 folder. It installed right next to the old 5.6.12 folder in the bin folder. I need to move the data folder to the 5.6.17 folder, obviously. So I first made a copy of the 5.6.17 folder and put it aside. Next I copied the contents of the 5.6.12 data folder (which was the wordpress tables folder, and several other files) over to the 5.6.17 data folder. Two file conflicts occured that I overwrote which may or may not be the problem, but I can restore the 5.6.17 folder back to what it was before I attempted this. ( I have backups of both the original 5.6.12 and 5.6.17 folders).

I launched WAMP and went to localhost/wordpress in my browswer and I get the "five minute installer" page. So the old data is not coming in.

I found a thread on the WordPress forums (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/database-recovery-with-only-a-folder-backup?replies=3) and his situation was almost identical to mine. He also had problem with Wamp due to a desinstallation of Aestan tray menu! His solution at the end was to edit the my.ini file so that it looked for the right data.

I went into my.ini in the 5.6.17 data folder and found this section below. What I did was edit the last few lines so that it now referenced the 5.6.12 folder instead of the 5.6.17 folder.

# The MySQL server
[wampmysqld]
port = 3306
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
key_buffer_size = 16M
max_allowed_packet = 1M
sort_buffer_size = 512K
net_buffer_length = 8K
read_buffer_size = 256K
read_rnd_buffer_size = 512K
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M
basedir=c:/wamp/bin/mysql/mysql5.6.12
log-error=c:/wamp/logs/mysql.log
datadir=c:/wamp/bin/mysql/mysql5.6.12/data

I tried to access localhost/wordpress again and I still have the five minute installer message. So obviously I'm not connecting correctly.

This is where I'm stuck. My WordPress is active, but I need to connect to the old data. Any insight would be helpful. All I need to do is connect to my old database.

Thanks!