Problem : "can't rmdir './test/' errno 17" Error comes while dropping a database. Reason : For maintaining the data present in the databases MySQL maintains directory. These directories have same name as the database name. While executing the "drop database demo;" command for dropping the database if it's not able to delete it's directories then it throws the above exception Solution : This issue can be solved by manually deleting the database data related directory from the installed directory. Where is the data directory present for MySQL database in windows ? The default location of this directory would be : C:\Program Files (x86)\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\data Inside data directory you will see folders present for all the databases, in my case it is 'demo' folder. Deleting this folder solves my problem.