MySQL Starts Then Stops

[P19GEH]

Hi, when i start MySQL it seems to start fine but then stops itself about a minute afterwards

 

MySQL was working fine until i truncated a large table within a database.

i left i.e open while the truncate took place and when i came back to the browser i got

"#2003 - The server is not responding" in PHPMyAdmin

when trying to start mysql in command prompt it says it started successfully but then if i try to do anything with it i get something along the lines of "unable to conntect to mysql on server 'localhost' "

 

mysql version is 4.1.1

 

i'm fairly new to mysql, so if the answer is obvious please be nice