MySQL does not run as a service

[DanielArkley]

I am experiencing a very strange problem. When I try to run MySQL as a service and as configured by Plesk, the mysqld-nt process starts but does not appear to do anything. Incoming connections get ignored, nothing gets written to log files, and no queries run.

Using the exact same configuration file, but calling mysqld-nt from a command line using the --standalone argument, MySQL starts and behaves just fine.

I have no idea why MySQL refuses to run as a service but is ok standalone. Any ideas would be appreciated.