MySQL: my.ini not read

I got the same exact problem and the solution you posted from the other thread was kinda convoluted and it wasn't really solving the actual issue. I'm sure you did the same thing as me and added max_allowed_packet = 32M or whatever right under [mysqld] like every site says. Although this is perfectly correct, people forgot to mention and it took me a week to finally realize that there was already a default max_allowed_packet = 4M in the default my.ini file. I totally didn't notice this because each line of [mysqld] is so heavily commented. Obviously, since the original max_allowed_packet = 4M was like 2 pages down from [mysqld] header, it overrode any setting you manually inserted.

In MySQL Server 5.6 the my.ini location is under ProgramData "C:\ProgramData\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6" not in the installation folder under programs files.

Be careful to what Kosmous says. don't add a new line and forget the old one and don't forget to restart the service.

I started another thread at the MySQL forums and a patient user was able to help me out:

http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?10,595697,595697#msg-595697

It's not the most satisfying solution because it essentially means reinstalling the server manually whenever you want to change something in the my.ini file, but at least it works somehow.

I faced the same issue. In my case service was using my.ini from another path (C:\ProgramData\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\my.ini). You can check it by examing the properties of MySQLServer service in services.msc.