Restore a WordPress database from .frm and .idb only

Good deal with getting the connection string out. Based on that and the error it looks like you'll need to change some things around with your SQL config.

First, SQL 2012 does not support the database compatibility level for SQL Server 7. You'll need to go back down to at least SQL Server 2005.

Based on that connection string info the app is for a SQL server named SCFRANGOS. You can try to create a host entry for SCFRANGOS on the machine you're running the app from and give it the IP of your SQL server, or create it in DNS.

The database name you need to use FVBraganca. Since you have both the mdf (data) and ldf (log) you can try to reattach the database to your SQL Server.

You also need to create a local user on the server and name it usuario. Then you need to create a Windows login on the SQL server for usario and that login needs to be added to the FVBraganca dabase as a user.

Alternatively, if you're comfortable with editing the binary you could edit your own connection information into the exe.

Steps:

1. Install SQL Server 2005 or earlier on your server. You can download SQL Server 2005 Express from here. Again, SQL 2005 is the newest version you can use that will support the SQL 7 database format.
2. Make sure the server where SQL Server is installed can be resolved as SCFRANGOS on your network from wherever you are running the application. You can add a host entry or an alias in DNS. Or you can add an entry in the hosts file where you will run the application (c:\windows\system32\drives\etc\hosts typically). When this step is complete you should be able to receive replies when doing a ping SCFRANGOS from the machine where you want to run the application.

3. Attach the database and name it FVBraganca. Connect to SQL Server and run this (assuming your mdf and ldf files are in c:\myapp and are called myapp.mdf and myapp_log.ldf):

   CREATE DATABASE FVBraganca
ON (FILENAME='c:\myapp\myapp.mdf'),
    (FILENAME='c:\myapp\myapp_log.ldf'),
FOR ATTACH; GO

4. Create a user called usario on the server where SQL Server is installed. Instructions are found here.

5. Create a login in SQL Server for the user created above

   CREATE LOGIN [myserver\usario] FROM WINDOWS
GO

6. Add the new login as a user of the database. If the user already exists you'll need to remove it first so you don't have a mismatch of the security identifiers. The existing user will have the security identifier tied to it from the original SQL Server where the database was last used.

   USE FVBraganca
GO
DROP USER usario
GO
CREATE USER usario FOR LOGIN usario
GO

7. Since you don't know what the user needs access to yet you might just want to grant it dbo access to the database. This is typically not a good idea but in this case it'll be easier until you know for sure what objects in the database the application uses.

   sp_addrolemember @rolename='db_owner', @membername='usario'

That should be it. As long as the database attaches cleanly I think this should get you going.

This will depend a bit on your table type. With MyISAM tables, you can generally just copy the folder and files and everything will work. With other table types, it sometimes doesn't work as well.

The first thing you can try is to completely replace your MySQL data directory with the one from the backup. I would move it out of the way (mv /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql-orig) so that you can easily restore it. Do this with the MySQL server not running and preferably on a testing server so you don't accidentally break something on your production machine.

Since you have the old hard drive data but can't get the drive to boot, it may be relatively painless to start MySQL from that drive (you can do this in a couple of ways; chroot to the old drive and try to start it there, copy the files to a server with a working MySQL instance, stop mysqld, edit the configuration file to point to the old mysql data directory, then restart MySQL, or finally just follow the steps above to completely replace the mysql data directory on the working instance with the one from the old server.

As D. Kasipovic points out, you should check the file permissions on the files you have restored, it could be as simple as a file permission problem.

You should make sure you're connecting as the root user or another user with administrative permissions; otherwise it's likely that a MySQL permissions will keep you from being able to see the databases. Depending what method ends up working for you, you may need to create any users that had permissions on that database.