I am trying to install Drupal using IIS 7 on Windows and it gets pretty far in the installation before it fails with the below error message. I always end up having to go back into Windows Services and start the MySQL service back up because it stopped when this error happens. I've tried installing Drupal Commons and just the vanilla Drupal distribution.
An AJAX HTTP error occurred. HTTP Result Code: 500 Debugging information
follows. Path: http://www.example.com/install.php?
profile=commons&locale=en&id=1&op=do StatusText: Service unavailable (with
message) ResponseText: PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2006
MySQL server has gone away: SELECT expire, value FROM {semaphore} WHERE
name = :name; Array ( [:name] => variable_init ) in lock_may_be_available()
(line 167 of D:\Projects\example.com\Web\includes\lock.inc).Uncaught
exception thrown in shutdown function.PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]:
General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away: DELETE FROM {semaphore}
WHERE (value = :db_condition_placeholder_0) ; Array ( [:db_condition_placeholder_0] => 2549963715563580905eb52.94473467 )
in lock_release_all() (line 269 of
D:\Projects\example.com\Web\includes\lock.inc).
I did try setting the service properties to restart on failure and that seems to have gotten me further along in the installation process but not sure what causes this?
I set the MySQL Windows Service properties to restart automatically when failure occurs. It still randomly fails but gets a lot further and is eventually successful.
I also optimized MySQL but not sure it really helped:
https://www.drupal.org/node/259580