[mysql] Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.user' doesn't exist

I installed MySQL community server 5.7.10 using binary zip. I extracted the zip in c:\mysql and created the data folder in c:\mysql\data. I created the config file as my.ini and placed it in c:\mysql (root folder of extracted zip). Below is the content of the my.ini file

# set basedir to your installation path
basedir=C:\mysql
# set datadir to the location of your data directory
datadir=C:\mysql\data

I'm trying to start MySQL using mysqld --console, but the process is aborted with the below error.

2015-12-29T18:04:01.141930Z 0 [ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.user' doesn't exist
2015-12-29T18:04:01.141930Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting 

Any help on this will be appreciated.

mysqld --initialize to initialize the data directory then mysqld &

If you had already launched mysqld& without mysqld --initialize you might have to delete all files in your data directory

You can also modify /etc/my.cnf to add a custom path to your data directory like this :

[mysqld]
...  
datadir=/path/to/directory

The mysql_install_db script also needs the datadir parameter:

mysql_install_db --user=root --datadir=$db_datapath

On Maria DB you use the install script mysql_install_db to install and initialize. In my case I use an environment variable for the data path. Not only does mysqld need to know where the data is (specified via commandline), but so does the install script.

You have to initialize the data directory by running the following command

mysqld --initialize [with random root password]

mysqld --initialize-insecure [with blank root password]

in laragon delete all internal data files from "C:\laragon\data\mysql" and restart it, that worked for me

I had the same problem. For some reason --initialize did not work. After about 5 hours of trial and error with different parameters, configs and commands I found out that the problem was caused by the file system.

I wanted to run a database on a large USB HDD drive. Drives larger than 2 TB are GPT partitioned! Here is a bug report with a solution:

https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=28913

In short words: Add the following line to your my.ini:

innodb_flush_method=normal

I had this problem with mysql 5.7 on Windows.

As suggested above, i had similar issue with mysql-5.7.18,
i did this in this way

1. Executed this command from "MYSQL_HOME\bin\mysqld.exe --initialize-insecure"
2. then started "MYSQL_HOME\bin\mysqld.exe"
3. Connect workbench to this localhost:3306 with username 'root'
4. then executed this query "SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = 'root';"

password was also updated successfully.