Thread:Project:Support desk/How to restore a wiki without a backup?/reply (3)

You could try to install XAMPP and copy (not move, so you have a backup intact in case of necessity) the mysql data files over the new installation, and pray for it to just work. Note that connecting to mysql will require you to use the old passwords, since passwords are in the old files.

This may not work at all, since someone told me mysql stores stupid things like OS and machine-specific information in the datafiles, making the move of datafiles from one computer to other impossible. I don't know if this has changed, though.

If you have further problems trying to make XAMPP recognize the old mysql data, you should probably ask on a XAMPP/mysql forum where people may have more specialized knowledgement about this than here.