Best option would be to backup your database regularly using MySQL dump. You can't just grab the MySQL files and restore them and expect them to work. It takes a bit more than that.

Run:
mysqldump --add-drop-table --all-databases -u username -p > mysql-backup.sql

On my Linux system I've setup a cron job to backup my databases nightly and compress the results. They then get backed up into the cloud by my backup system.

Backup is good.

You really should read the documentation to understand what you're doing.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html

Here's the command I run:
mysqldump --add-drop-table database_name -u mysql_username -p > database_name.sql

To restore:
mysql -u mysql_username -p database_name < database_name.sql

alright i finnly figured out what i was doing wrong... pritty much you have to run cmd in the proper folder i was using the mysql cmd if anyone else has this problem pritty much just make a cmd file in c:\program files\mysql\mysql server 5.1\bin    then type in the command noted by glarawyn ^_^ sorry thanks for all the help glarawyn i guess i just pulled a stupid xD