I'll check thanks, but if either of those were the cause, surely it would have failed the first time I ran the server and not waited until a reboot?
It's the whole reboot thing that is confusing me, if it had failed from the very start I'd have assumed an error in my config, but the very fact that it ran once, let us connect and play, but then failed after the server PC was rebooted makes me think it's something else.
I'll look for a log file like you suggest, and post it if/when I find it
Cheers.
EDIT
Checked the settings, they all match, the MYSQL server won't start up from the services panel, just gives error "Windows could not start the MySQL service on Local Computer Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly"